If there are any misspellings in this post, I can’t take responsibility.  My dog is at my feet snoring and the cat thinks I should be petting her instead of typing on a keyboard.  She’s discovered that she likes to sit on the keyboard:)   Animals really have their own unique personalities.  I’m looking forward to today because the weatherman is saying today’s high will be 54 degrees.  Not bad for a November day in Michigan.  Really bad if you live in Florida:)

Last week, I left a workshop and I was totally swamped with questions.  One that I get a lot from families is should I fill out the Common application or fill out the universities application.  You can go to www.commonapp.org to see the common application.  If you don’t know me my response to this question in the past has been to fill out the universities applications.

The stats for the common application, however, are becoming pretty interesting.

Over 1.6 M students have submitted applications.  The average student submits to 3.87 universities.  There are 391 members in 42 states.  As you can see it’s catching on.  Why?  Simple, why write the same thing four times when you can do it once!

There are some interesting things about the common application.

For instance you can sign up your teachers and councilors on their system.  The system will send an email to them requesting their evaluation.  The teacher and councilor have an option to fill out the form on-line, refuse, or fill a paper copy.  If they opt for a paper copy your child will have an additional step.

The evaluation form of the common application has a section for the teacher to rate your child in a number of different categories from “Below average” to “One of the top few I’ve encountered”.  Examples of these ratings are integrity, leadership, maturity, reaction to setbacks and more.    The teacher can also write, in 149 characters or less, how long they’ve known the student and another 149 characters to talk about their first words that come to their mind about your child.  What I don’t like about this is the last sentence was 36 characters over the limit!  This simply means their answer has to be very concise and short.  The common application does make up for this short fall because it allows the teacher to write a letter and upload it to the system.  So if the teacher can really talk more about your child and I think this is a great feature they added.

It’s always my preference that we give the teacher or councilor as much room to write as possible.  The more they write the better the school has an idea more about your child.  Your child should help their teacher or counselor to write a glowing review of them!  Have list accomplishments and activities. That way they have a thought starter.  I would even give them examples that highlight their abilities in the different rating areas that I referenced above.  The schools will see these ratings.  Don’t leave it up to the teacher to fill out an evaluation or the forms using just their memory!  Take the initiative to help them write the best review of your child!!

In the end the common application according to their website has about 390 participating colleges around the country.  A very small percentage.  If you do choose to use it, I would call the admission area of the university you’re interested and ask them what they think of the form.

The bottom line is my preference between the Common Application vs. the university application will depend.  First if you’re having trouble getting your child to fill out one application, the common application will make your life easier.  In the end, however, my preference would be for the application that allows your child to give the most personal information.  The more the university understands your child and can see how they will benefit the university the better!

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