Not only do high school seniors have the stress of applying to colleges, but this year they also bear the added weight of changes and challenges with the application system.
Throughout the 2013 college application process, college applicants and admissions officials have been experiencing difficulties using the Common Application.
Problems with the program became apparent as soon as the application process opened on Aug. 1.
Applicants have experienced issues with uploading recommendation letters, with frozen screens, and with essay formatting.
The Common Application program deleted information from sections students had already filled out and charged for multiple submissions.
“It messed up my essay. It reformatted it, which wasted a lot of time,” senior Ian Bankhead said.
When students tried to review their applications, the PDF showed a blank page, so they were unable to check their work.
“It wouldn’t check off that I completed the Education section, so I couldn’t assign any recommenders,” senior Hannah Nagy said.
Some students found that after they completed the application, new questions were added and their application was registered “incomplete.”
“After I had already submitted an application, I realized that part of my information had been deleted, so I had to contact the school and redo everything. It was extremely stressful and frustrating,” senior Kimmy Crickette said about her struggle with the Common Application.
To add to this, the system had trouble meshing with Naviance, a program that allows college counselors to access their students’ college information and connects transcripts and recommendation letters to the Common Application.
Colleges were unable to see the information that was linked to the Common Application from Naviance.
Because of all these difficulties, the nonprofit that runs the Common Application brought in extra technicians to assist with customer support and technical problems.
Colleges have been understanding, and many have even extended their deadlines in order for applicants to correct the problems with their applications.
Some colleges have created optional partial applications for students to fill out as consolation for the Common Application being ambiguous.
“I was going to use the Common Application, but it was having trouble, so the college I was going to use it for sent me an e-mail saying ‘use our app instead of the Common App. So I just used theirs,” senior Colton Johnson said.
Since its creation in 1975 as a paper application, the Common Application services over 500 universities and colleges, according to Richard Perez-Pena’s article in the New York Times.
In 1998 the process became an online production. This year there are more problems than ever before.
According to Pena, many colleges are now contemplating switching from the Common Application to some other form of application for the next term.