Just for a moment, forget all the glitches. Forget the panicked high-school students who couldn’t log in to submit their applications or who saw their essays garbled. Forget the parents who paid the same application fee twice because they couldn’t tell if it had gone through, the admissions officers who waited months to import applications, the college counselors who uploaded recommendations that vanished into a virtual fog.
Without question, the rollout of CA4—the Common Application’s new online system—has been calamitous, prompting dozens of colleges to push back their early-admission deadlines. The Common Application, which 724,000 students filled out to submit three million applications in the last enrollment cycle, is the cornerstone of the admissions process at hundreds of selective colleges. Legions depend on it. Many offer no other way to apply. So nobody blames the frustrated folks who’ve vented on Facebook and Twitter, cursing the standardized admissions form for complicating the transaction it’s meant to simplify.
Yet the technical problems are hardly all. The saga has raised deeper concerns about the Common Application, amplifying doubts that some enrollment officials have long held about its ascendance, rekindling many questions. Why have 517 of the planet’s colleges, varying by size, mission, and selectivity, entrusted the same system with delivering their precious documents? What have they lost by ceding some control of admissions to a third party?
Plenty of people are asking. During the College Board’s annual conference last month, admissions officials from Harvard, Princeton, and other highly selective colleges met privately to discuss the future of the nonprofit organization, also called the Common Application, that runs the online system. Those who admit students to some of the nation’s most prominent campuses wondered, as one participant recalls, whether they had become mere spectators: “People were saying ‘Who owns this?’”
Founded to increase students’ access to colleges, the Common Application has become a well-branded business that generates big-time revenue. A middleman that wears a policy hat. A membership organization that controls what supplemental questions colleges can ask and barks when they break the rules, by waiving an essay requirement, for instance, or promoting their own applications over the Common App.
Above all, it’s a club, and clubs demand consensus. As more and more institutions come aboard, they all have to follow the same rules, accept the same basic form. Some enrollment leaders question the meaning of a group that includes the mammoth Ohio State University and the tiny St. Olaf College.
“I have no quarrel with the idea of the Common App,” says Tom Weede, vice president for enrollment management at Butler University, which joined in 1995. But its growth has presented problems, he believes. “Some schools don’t want certain questions and others do, so it falls to the most generic level, and you lose some of the ability to present yourself in it.”
From 2001 to 2012, the number of colleges using the Common Application more than doubled, and the number of applications coursing through the system nearly quadrupled, according to an analysis by The Chronicle. Such explosive growth has both pleased and worried admissions officials. Even some who’ve long applauded the organization say it has too much influence. Yet detractors choose their words carefully. Many rely on the Common Application, and for better or worse, others figure they will eventually.
Although the Common Application is now a vast, bustling highway, it was once just a shortcut. Its founding purpose: to make applying to college easier.
Back before the computer, applicants and counselors had to write or type answers to the same questions on every college’s application. Each year the nation’s hands cramped up. Then, in 1975, Colgate University, Vassar College, and a handful of other private institutions with similar admissions requirements created a common form that students could photocopy and mail in.
This modest stand against redundancy was infused with a high-minded mission: increasing access by going beyond grades and test scores to conduct robust evaluations of each applicant. “It was a time for reaffirming what was important in admissions,” says Mary F. Hill, a former dean of admissions at Colgate who served on the Common Application’s board of directors from 1996 to 2005.
To consider more than just numbers was to seek out the “whole” student, the sum of his or her background, passions, and talents. The founding colleges required an essay and recommendations from counselors or teachers. A selection process using objective and subjective criteria, now known as holistic review, would be the organization’s bedrock.
By the mid-1990s, more than 150 colleges—all private, all relatively selective—were using the Common Application, run by a network of volunteers. In 1996 the National Association of Secondary School Principals dedicated a staff member to handle logistics and the increasing volume of paperwork. The application then was a booklet of perforated forms with maroon type; the masthead listed participating colleges in small print. Each year, as more names were added, the letters shrank.
The Common App first went online in 1998. To keep up with growth, the board hired a staff and incorporated as a nonprofit organization. It also agreed to admit public universities, the first six of which joined in 2001.
That such a diverse group of colleges could agree on common principles encouraged Ms. Hill. It still does. “Sometimes colleges operate more out of their own institutional wants and needs, rather than considering the collective wisdom of what would benefit the industry as a whole, and students,” says Ms. Hill, now director of college counseling and academic planning at St. Paul Academy and Summit School, in Minnesota. “It’s one of the sad evolutionary facts of our profession.”
The evolution of the Common App has involved, like admissions itself, a constant tension among competing interests. In a realm where exclusivity reigns, some deans have never liked the one-for-all spirit of the thing, not to mention its name. The word “common” can convey “ordinary,” an adjective that admissions officers would never apply to their own distinctive colleges.
Still, the application’s appeal is powerful. Although access is its altruistic aim, colleges have long viewed it as a tool for enhancing their bottom lines. Most any new member can expect a surge in applicants.
“We don’t exist to help colleges increase their applications,” Rob Killion, the Common Application’s executive director, told The Chronicle in 2010. “But it’s a side effect of what we do.”
That appeal is irresistible to many colleges, whether they’re searching for academic superstars in one-horse towns, seeking more underrepresented minority students, scrounging for wealthy kids, or just scrambling to fill seats. “There’s a little bit of a narcotic effect there,” says Daniel M. Lundquist, vice president for marketing and enrollment management at the Sage Colleges. “The Common App’s a brand. It provides good visibility. It’s an application pipeline.”
As technology has changed the way students shop for colleges, the Common Application has come to exemplify what economists call a network effect, in which the value of a good or service increases as more people use it. The more colleges that accept the form, the more useful it is for students. The more students use it, and the more colleges keep joining, the more a given institution may reap the rewards of association.
“We just don’t have the resources to get our staff or our marketing message in front of students, frankly, the way the Common App can,” says Richard A. Clark Jr., director of undergraduate admission at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As of late October, Georgia Tech, in its first year as a member, had seen applications from women increase by 41 percent and from in-state students by 20 percent. More applicants are coming in from Missouri, Massachusetts, Washington. “The access is right there,” Mr. Clark says. “You are infiltrating markets.”
Imagine a Tuesday night in November. A student logs in to the Common Application, fills out the form, and submits the additional information required by Cornell University, his first choice. A minute later, he clicks his way over to Emory University’s page, adds it to his “My Colleges” tab, and scrolls through its requirements. Eventually he applies there, too, along with two other places he hadn’t previously considered. A college can ignore the power of such a scenario as easily as a shoe company these days can ignore Zappos.com, where one purchase leads to another.
At least until this fall, ease of use has made the Common App a success by any measure. According to its tax return for 2011, the organization, based in Arlington, Va., generated $13-million in revenue. Of the group’s 517 members, 178 offer no other way to apply. The fee structure rewards exclusivity. Nonexclusive members pay $4.75 per application; exclusive members pay $4. Colleges that further “streamline” their policies—by having no more than two early-admission plans, for instance—pay only $3.75. All nine admissions officials on the organization’s board represent exclusive users.
The Common Application now has nine employees, but it expects to grow to 65. Next summer, as part of a long-term acquisition plan, the organization will hire about 30 employees who now work for a company called Hobsons, which designed and developed the new online system. (Hobsons also owns Naviance, which high schools use to send documents to colleges, and the website College Confidential.)
In the admissions profession, the Common App is ubiquitous. This year it was the lone platinum sponsor of the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual conference, for which it paid $50,000. (The Chronicle was also a sponsor of the event.) Recently the Common App gave the association $80,000 to send 80 college counselors to a professional-development workshop. Each year it mails a poster to every high school in the nation, listing its ever longer roster of colleges.
With visibility comes cachet. Joining the Common Application in 1990 was an important move for Ursinus College, says Richard G. DiFeliciantonio, vice president for enrollment. “There was status associated with that membership,” he says. “It confirmed our position in the marketplace.”
Now he believes the benefits have less to do with prestige than with scale. The wider a college’s recruitment net, the more applicants of every kind it can attract. He credits the Common App with helping Ursinus double its enrollment of both nonwhite students and those eligible for federal Pell Grants.
Mr. DiFeliciantonio also sees trade-offs. With more applications, “yield"—the percentage of accepted students who enroll—declines and becomes harder to predict. (A law of recruitment: More applicants doesn’t necessarily mean more serious applicants.) And member colleges must relinquish some authority over the questions they can and cannot ask. “We were willing to put up with a loss of control,” he says, “to get with the herd.”
That herd is closely watched. Several years ago, Mr. DiFeliciantonio says, he received a stern letter from the Common Application regarding online “fast apps,” which Ursinus was using at the time. The partially filled-out applications invited students to apply free of charge, no essay required—just a personal statement. Under the rules, the letter said, members were required to treat all applications the same way, with “equally prominent” links and identical incentives and fees.
Mr. DiFeliciantonio, who maintains that Ursinus hadn’t violated any requirements (it waived fees for any student who applied online), recalls feeling as if he’d received a warning from the Stasi. “I didn’t mind the communication,” he says, “but it was the tone.”
Other admissions officials say privately that they dislike what they describe as excessive scrutiny from the Common Application. “They’re so restrictive,” says one dean, who feared that his college would lose its membership if he publicly criticized the organization. “They’re trying to police everything we do.”
Like the admissions-counseling group, the Common App has a compliance process. Each year its staff reviews (or, as it says, “audits”) the websites of nonexclusive members, to ensure that they aren’t giving precedence to other forms of applying. A college that charges no application fee, for instance, can’t promote its own application as “free” unless it does the same for the Common Application. The organization notifies members of possible violations and asks for them to be rectified. If that happens more than three times in five years, a college is subject to dismissal.
Only one member—Tulane University—has ever been expelled, according to the Common Application. After Hurricane Katrina, Tulane used fast apps to build its pool. By continuing to waive fees and essay requirements if students applied that way, and failing to specify other ways to apply, the university violated the Common Application’s rules, according to two people familiar with the situation.
These days Tulane sends partially filled out applications to prospective students and requires a personal statement. Enough, says Earl D. Retif, vice president for enrollment management, to satisfy the Common Application’s requirements. Recently he asked about re-upping Tulane’s membership. The answer: Only if it agreed to be an exclusive user for at least three years, as required by the organization’s reinstatement policy.
Mr. Retif isn’t keen on that. “We have been doing OK without the Common App,” he says. “I didn’t want to be put in a position of being told what to put on our application. I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to run an admissions office. Sometimes the Common App’s more interested in controlling the process than in helping students.”
The Common Application requires an essay of no more than 650 words (applicants choose from one of five prompts). The problem, some deans say, is that the answers to certain questions are more useful than others. Colleges can add their own essay prompts but must weigh the benefits against concerns: Asking students for more work might deter them.
About two-thirds of colleges in the Common App’s fold do have additional requirements, like short-answer prompts and practical questions—for instance, about relatives who attended the college or a willingness to enroll in January. Such questions are subject to the organization’s review. It rejects those that, in its opinion, duplicate any on the main form. To standardize the wording of frequently asked questions, there is an online bank of approved prompts from which colleges may choose.
Kelly A. Walter finds this constraining. “There’s less willingness to allow us to continue asking questions that are unique to us, to get an answer that’s important to us,” says Ms. Walter, associate vice president and executive director of admissions at Boston University.
This year, she says, the university was told that it could no longer include a question for foreign students about the timing of applications for permanent residency. “The when makes a difference in terms of how we consider financial aid and follow up with them,” she says. Nor could the university continue to ask applicants if they had attended a summer program on the campus, which might indicate their interest.
BU appealed those denials and waited more than two months for an answer (No). Though Ms. Walter describes herself as a longtime fan of the Common App, she has some doubts. “There’s a fine line between a membership organization and a policy organization,” she says. “It’s become a monopoly in many ways, with a pervasive presence in the marketplace.”
Scott Anderson has heard that criticism many times. A former admissions officer and college counselor, he is now the Common Application’s senior director for policy and its most visible representative, so he’s been on the receiving end of an array of complaints. Some members say the application has homogenized the admissions process. Others say that because colleges are free to ask for additional short-answer responses and essays, the Common App is not common enough.
The application’s popularity reflects the appeal of its mission, Mr. Anderson says. The exhibit halls of higher education are full of companies that will do whatever a college asks. The Common App is different. “We are not a vendor,” he says. “We do not customize our services.”
Audits of member colleges’ websites and scrutiny of their questions are meant to ensure simplicity and equity for all students in the admissions process, Mr. Anderson explains. The flexibility is there, he insists, for members to get whatever information they might want.
“This is who we are,” he says. “We fully believe there’s a best way to admit students to college, to use holistic review, and we provide a service to make that happen. What we can’t give members is a one-off exception to every policy we have. If we did that, we would not be able to service anybody.”
For all the organization’s rules, however, it can’t guarantee holistic review. Just because a college requires an essay doesn’t mean admissions officers will read it. “We take members at their word,” Mr. Anderson says.
The Common Application is not without competitors. CollegeNET, an Oregon-based technology company, builds customized application-processing systems for some 500 colleges worldwide. After creating an account through, say, Washington State University, a student can automatically transfer basic information to another member college that has signed on to that service.
Jim Wolfston, the company’s chief executive, has seen many clients leave for the Common Application, whose mission he says he supports. “The problem is this nonprofit-corporatism ethos,” he says. “The slogan of holistic admissions has become a marketing pitch so that colleges can increase their application volume, and that’s a shame.”
Joshua J. Reiter, who helped build the Common Application’s first online system, went on to start the Universal College Application in 2007. The for-profit company is a small rival, for sure: Membership peaked at about 80 colleges a few years ago, then dwindled to 32, in part because those that also belonged to the Common App decided it was simpler to manage just one system. But since problems with the Common Application arose, Princeton University and seven other colleges have joined or rejoined the Universal College Application, which admissions deans say charges $1,000 annually, plus $4.50 per application.
The company doesn’t dictate colleges’ requirements. Clients are free to require 10 essays or none. “We’re not the experts in college admissions,” Mr. Reiter says. “Colleges are.”
Marquette University uses the Common App and the Universal College App, along with its own application, to offer students as many options as possible. Last year 58 percent of applicants used the university’s form, and 42 percent used the Common App. Of 23,000 applications, the Universal College Application delivered just seven.
This summer and fall, Thyra Briggs has received a slew of angry emails and voicemails from parents, some of whom screamed. “You hear the stress,” she says. Ms. Briggs, who began her term as president of the Common Application’s board of directors in July, gets it. As of the first week of November, Harvey Mudd College, where she is vice president for admission and financial aid, still couldn’t get access to students’ Common App submissions.
During the summer, the board members knew of development delays with the new system, but at no point did they anticipate a derailment, says Ms. Briggs. One lesson, she concedes, is that the board needs members who understand technology as well as admissions.
As it evolves, the Common Application must become something more than a delivery system, some admissions officials believe. “Most of the barriers to applying to college are not reduced by the Common App,” says Nancy Leopold, executive director of CollegeTracks, a nonprofit group that works with low-income and first-generation students in Maryland. “It does nothing to reach kids who don’t have grown-ups to help them with the process.”
Although many colleges have found that the Common App increases the quality and geographic diversity of their applicant pools, there are conflicting reports about its power to attract more underrepresented minority students. Some campuses have seen big upticks; others have not. “It tends to be the white, wealthier kids that we get from the Common App,” says Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president for enrollment management at DePaul University, which now receives more applications from California than from any other state besides Illinois. One reason the university keeps its own application: “We have a lot of local students who are applying to fewer places. They seem to like to use our own app.”
When students log in to the Common Application as seniors in high school, much has already gone right for them: They’re just weeks or months away from submitting college applications. The site’s of little use to those who aren’t prepared. That’s why the Common App should engage students earlier, says John F. Latting, dean of admission at Emory. “This wonderful, massive consortium of colleges could be more proactive in terms of helping more students get to college,” he says. “Why doesn’t the Common App start when you’re in your freshman year, and you’re saying, ‘I want to go to college—teach me how to do it’?”
The Common App must also embrace experimentation, perhaps by considering a process for matching students and colleges, Mr. Latting says. “Sometimes regulation can curb innovation.”
In the near term, the Common Application will have to focus on damage control. Recently, Ms. Briggs has had tough conversations with admissions deans who aren’t sure how answer questions from their presidents and boards, and who fret about wearing their staffs thin as they scramble to work around the glitches. “Their frustration is tangible and valid,” she says. “A lot of trust has been lost this year. As an organization, we will need to rebuild trust with our members and users.”
That might not be easy. Although Mr. Anderson has said the technical issues are not “systemic,” problems persist. Last week, for instance, Duke University informed college counselors that some documents it had received from high schools contained “corrupt data.” Many colleges are asking high schools to email or fax documents that can’t still be downloaded.
Meanwhile, the admissions officials who met at the College Board’s conference last month plan to lay out their concerns and possibly make recommendations to the Common Application’s board of directors.
Although some campus officials have praised the response of the Common Application’s staff to the problems, others have described it as slow and scattered. “Mishaps happen, but the information provided was not explained thoroughly,” says John F. Dolan, vice president for enrollment management at Le Moyne College, in New York. “That’s where the Common App has really failed.”
The resulting uncertainty frustrated Fred Pestello, Le Moyne’s president. “He’s just incensed,” Mr. Dolan says. In late October, Mr. Pestello directed the admissions office to send out paper applications. That meant creating a document that no longer existed, and Mr. Dolan had to hunt for an old copy.
But he ordered 7,000 new ones, and Le Moyne mailed them with a letter from Mr. Pestello and prepaid return envelopes to all students who had inquired, as well as hundreds who had started a Common Application but not yet submitted it. The whole thing cost the college at least $12,000, according to Mr. Dolan: “I just blew my admissions budget.”
He suspects that this enrollment cycle will prove to be a tipping point. “What the Common App has lost is, certainly, the trust of its membership,” he says, “the core trust in its ability to expand, adapt, and change with the market.”
Whether Le Moyne should continue using the Common App is a question Mr. Dolan is asking. The calculation is complex. Last year 65 percent of applicants came in that way.
Expanding the applicant pool is crucial for small institutions like Le Moyne. While big-name colleges compete for prestige, many are just trying to maintain demand, enrollment, and revenue. That is especially challenging in regions with a dwindling number of high-school graduates.
What Mr. Dolan must determine is this: How many more applications would he need next year to offset the decline that might result from dropping the Common Application? And how would that change models for predicting which accepted applicants will enroll? Last year the yield for students using the college’s own application was 26 percent; for those using the Common Application, it was about 12 percent.
Plenty of colleges do just fine with their own applications, but ditching the Common App wouldn’t be just an enrollment-management decision. Public relations would come into play, too. “You’re walking away from the only app many students and counselors know,” says Ms. Walter, of Boston University. “If your apps go down 20 percent, it’s front-page news.”
The most likely shift: Some colleges that now use the Common Application exclusively won’t keep all their eggs in one basket. “A situation like this, it causes you to think, ‘Hmm, strategically, is that a good place to be?’” says Rick Bischoff, vice president for enrollment at Case Western Reserve University. He plans to consider other options but can’t imagine leaving the group. “The reach of the Common App is so vast,” he says. “They’re a very, very important partner for us.” Mary Lou W. Bates, dean of admissions and financial aid at Skidmore College, has a similar view. “It’s inexcusable that what happened happened,” she says. “But there’s a loyalty and a belief in the Common App.”
Over time, the organization’s gravitational pull may prove stronger than any frustrations with it. The Common Application doesn’t guarantee lifetime membership. But as many members believe, once you join the club, you’re in it for good.
Timeline: The Common Application, 1975-2013
1975: The Common Application begins a pilot program with 15 member institutions, primarily selective liberal-arts colleges.
1980: Passes 100 members.
1994: Harvard U. becomes the first Ivy League member; Dartmouth College follows the next year.
1998: First online application system launches.
2000: The Common Application incorporates as a nonprofit; passes 200 members.
2001: The Universities of Delaware, Vermont, and Maine are among the first public institutions to join.
2004: Binghamton University becomes the first State University of New York campus to join; by 2011, 18 other SUNY campuses will have joined.
2007: Passes 300 members.
2010: First international institutions join; passes 400 members; number of unique applicants exceeds 500,000.
2013: Paper application is retired; passes 500 member institutions; fourth generation of the online application faces technical difficulties and criticism.
