The Common App: 5 Things to Know

June 2023

Summary: The easiest way to apply to most colleges is through the Common App. And sometimes it’s the only way. The trick is to give yourself plenty of time to get used to it: meaning a good month or two.

What is it?

The Common Application (or “Common App”) is the most commonly-used platform to apply to colleges in America. About 1,000 different colleges accept the Common App, and in many cases, it’s the only application they use. So if you want to apply to college, there’s a really good chance you’ll be using the Common App. But there are a few things to know before you get started.

#1. You can only apply to a maximum of 20 colleges

Now you might be thinking: Why would anyone apply to more than 20 colleges? But many students do, and for good reason. These days, college admissions is more selective than ever. And that makes admissions at the Top 30 schools more unpredictable than ever. Each year, for example, we’ll see the same top-tier applicant get accepted to Stanford, but rejected from Harvard. Or they get accepted to Princeton, but rejected from Brown. At that level, there’s a bit of luck involved. For that reason, it makes sense to hedge your bets and apply to more colleges than you think you might need, particularly if you’re targeting the most competitive schools.

The Common App only lets you apply to up to 20 colleges. So if you decide at some point in the admissions process that you’d like to add a few more universities to your list, you’re going to need to use another application platform, such as the Coalition App. The problem is that the Coalition App is accepted by far fewer schools (and it’s clunkier to use). So if you expect your college list to ever grow beyond 20, you’d be wise to separate your list into colleges that you can apply to through the Coalition App, and colleges you can apply to through the Common App. Once you’ve submitted your application, you can’t take them back and refile them through a different platform, so plan ahead.

#2. Not all universities accept the Common App

The vast majority of universities use the Common App, but not all. For example, MIT and Georgetown are two top private universities that don’t use the Common App: if you want to apply to one of those schools, you’re going to have to apply directly on their school website. Similarly, the nine public universities within the University of California system (think: Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, etc.) use their own application portal. In the same way, the 50-something colleges in the Texas system (including UT Austin and Texas A&M) all use a platform called ApplyTexas. But you can also apply to these Texas schools through the Common App if you prefer.

Why do some colleges have their own application platform? Well, one of the benefits of the Common App is that once you input all of your personal and academic information, you never have to do it again. With the simple click of a button, you can easily add more colleges to your list. Since it’s so easy to add a few more colleges, many students add a bunch of colleges that they’re not really serious about as pure backups or moonshots. And colleges hate that because they really only want to get applications from students who are dying to go there. Why? Because if they accept you, but you decide to go somewhere else, it lowers their “yield rate,” and makes them look bad. Apparently colleges have feelings too.

Presumably, some schools figure that if you put in all the time and effort to fill out their proprietary application, then you must really want to go there. They may have other reasons for doing it as well.

#3. The key is to prioritize your activities

The academic portion of the Common App is fairly straightforward. They want to see your high school courses and GPA, any honors you’ve earned, your SAT or ACT scores (if you choose to submit them), and your teacher recommendations. Then they give you an area to input your top 10 extracurricular activities, with a brief description of your involvement in each one, and here’s where you have to be very strategic.

Realistically, they’re only going to focus on the top few activities on your list, because these should be the activities that are most important to you and where you devote the most time. In a nutshell, this is who you are. It’s not that they won’t glance at your other activities that are lower down the list, but they’re going to glean pretty much everything they need to know about your candidacy from those top few. So make sure you put your most recent, impressive, time-consuming activities at the top. That’s putting your best foot forward.

#4. Get started early

Filling out the Common App and getting familiar with how it works takes quite a bit of time so you should start early, ideally in June or July before your senior year. The official Common App for any given year doesn’t get released until August 1st. That’s when you’ll see all of the most up-to-date requirements and essay prompts for each school. But you don’t have to wait until August 1 to get started. You can go to commonapp.org and open an account and start inputting your information and looking at the various essay prompts. Your information will transfer over to the updated version on August 1st. Very little changes year-to-year, so your effort won’t be wasted. And you’ll want to start working on your essays as early as possible.

#5. Use it as a resource

It can be daunting to research different colleges on your own and keep track of what admissions materials they each need and what their different deadlines are. The Common App makes it easy. Once you’ve created an account, you can search for any school, and you’ll quickly get a rundown of what materials they require, when each portion is due, whether or not they offer Early Decision or Early Action options, how many essays you have to write, etc. It’s all right there. They even include links to each college website. In this way, the Common App can act as a convenient “hub” for all of your college research work.