NEWS FLASH: Problems with the Common App? No Problem

October 18, 2013 :: Admissionado Team

So everyone and their mother is having a panic attack about the technical glitches and problems with the common app. Totally understandable. This platform that is supposed to be a reliable, easy way to submit all your applications from one place, meant to take AWAY some of the stress of the application process…seems to have come down the fall flu or something.

The common app is kind of a hot mess right now. Applicants are having trouble logging in, accessing their applications, losing saved information (WRITE YOUR ESSAYS IN A WORD DOC, PEOPLE), delays with credit card payments, and slow as molasses navigation. And it isn’t just on the applicants’ end. College admissions staff are having problems downloading and viewing attached files–transcripts, letters of rec, etc.

But students and staff can breathe at least a small sigh of relief. Colleges are COMPLETELY aware of what is going on with the problems with the common app and are taking a number of steps to help their students through it:

University of Chicago is extending the deadline for Early Action applications to Nov. 8, 2013 for anyone experiencing technical difficulties with the Common Application. So is Columbia.

Yale is also prepared to be flexible with the application deadline if problems aren’t fixed by Nov. 1.

(Many other schools have either already changed or may change their deadlines, too: Duke, Northwestern, Cornell, to name a few.)

Princeton is offering a different way to apply altogether. Students who want to bypass the Common App can apply through the Universal College Application instead. Other schools are developing their own online forms.

So folks, while it isn’t the smoothest application season so far, there are other options, colleges ARE AWARE of what is going on, the sky is not falling, and it’s gonna be OKAY!