Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
head count logo 100

Head Count

Admissions and enrollment.

Common App No Longer Requires Members to Conduct ‘Holistic’ Reviews

By Eric Hoover September 19, 2014

Indianapolis — The Common Application will no longer require member colleges to conduct “holistic” reviews of applicants, the organization announced on Friday. The change in policy will allow institutions that do not require admission essays or recommendations to join the 549 colleges worldwide that use the standardized online admission form.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Indianapolis — The Common Application will no longer require member colleges to conduct “holistic” reviews of applicants, the organization announced on Friday. The change in policy will allow institutions that do not require admission essays or recommendations to join the 549 colleges worldwide that use the standardized online admission form.

Officials of the Common Application discussed the change, effective with the 2015-16 admissions cycle, during a session Friday morning here at the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual conference. In an interview on Thursday, Paul Mott, the Common App’s interim chief executive officer, told me that feedback from admissions officers and high-school counselors had persuaded the organization’s Board of Directors to make the change. “Our membership has said unequivocally that we must do more to increase access,” he said, “and this is reducing these barriers to access and pointless friction.”

Mr. Mott, a former college counselor, described himself as a strong believer in holistic evaluations, in which admissions staffs look at more than each applicant’s high-school grades and test scores. But, he said, “there is an inherent tension between holistic review and unfettered access.”

ADVERTISEMENT

In short, the announcement marks a significant shift for the Common App, which has long maintained that holistic review and access went hand in hand. Late last year, Scott Anderson, the Common App’s senior director for policy, described the organization’s philosophy this way: “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.”

In changing its membership criteria, the nonprofit organization essentially has responded to a longstanding criticism: that if the Common App were truly common, it would be open to the many institutions that do not ask applicants for all the things that the nation’s most selective colleges do. Down the line, the change means that less-selective institutions are likely to overlap with the more-selective ones within the same portal that more than 800,000 students used to submit applications in 2013-14.

All of that happened because of some editing. Earlier this week, the Common App’s Board of Directors revised the group’s mission statement, which since 2001 has included this sentence: “Membership is open to colleges and universities that promote access by evaluating students using a holistic selection process.” The organization has defined that as requiring an untimed writing sample of at least 250 words and at least one recommendation from a high-school counselor or teacher.

The revised mission statement says: “The Common Application is a not-for-profit membership organization committed to the pursuit of access, equity, and integrity in the college-admission process.” Although the organization has yet to set its new membership criteria, Mr. Mott said the revised mission statement would pave the way for colleges to join even if they did not plan to use the Common App’s essay, now required of all applicants who use the system. So a member institution might continue to ask applicants to complete the Common App’s writing prompt as well as additional essays—or no essays at all.

Eric J. Furda, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Common App’s Board of Directors, said if a member college decided to require, say, a 30-second video instead of an essay, it would be free to do so. In other words, the Common App, often criticized for “policing” the admissions policies of its members, plans to take a step back from its watchdog role. (At Friday morning’s session, some admissions deans described the new mission statement as an acknowledgment that there’s no way to know for sure whether a member college is, in fact, conducting holistic reviews.)

ADVERTISEMENT

“You ask the questions that you need to ask, it’s up to you,” Mr. Furda said of member colleges. “We’re not going to be putting this barrier in front of students.”

Some colleges surely will applaud the change, just as others surely will hate it. For now, one thing seems clear: The Common Application just expanded the roster of potential members greatly. Whether that’s good news or bad news depends, perhaps, on your view of a complicated question: Just how easy should it be to apply to college?

“I’m all for opening it up, but it’s going to take some engineering in terms of what defines access in a realm of high selectivity,” Paul Thiboutot, dean of admissions and financial aid at Carleton College and a former member of the Common App’s Board of Directors, said on Friday. “It was just a matter of time that the Common App would have to wrestle with how universal membership should become.”

Over the weekend, other admissions officials were just beginning to consider what the new policy might mean for colleges. Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president for enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University, noted that many institutions that admit a high percentage of their applicants use the essay for borderline cases, if at all.

“I’ve long been in favor of making it easier to apply to college, and greater and broader adaptation of the Common App would help in that regard…,” Mr. Boeckenstedt wrote in an e-mail. “I would be concerned about what happens if a single vendor dominates the process, however, as reverse switching costs would be substantial if a policy changed to the detriment of the members. I would suspect that would be unlikely however, and believe there is no going back. The more likely scenario would be that the most-selective institutions would break away to form their own ‘retro Common App’ with the panache of the original.”

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
Eric Hoover
About the Author
Eric Hoover
Eric Hoover writes about the challenges of getting to, and through, college. Follow him on Twitter @erichoov, or email him, at eric.hoover@chronicle.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
The Death of Shared Governance
Illustration showing money being funnelled into the top of a microscope.
'A New Era'
Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
Illustration showing classical columns of various heights, each turning into a stack of coins
Endowment funds
The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists

From The Review

Illustration of an ocean tide shaped like Donald Trump about to wash away sandcastles shaped like a college campus.
The Review | Essay
Why Universities Are So Powerless in Their Fight Against Trump
By Jason Owen-Smith
Photo-based illustration of a closeup of a pencil meshed with a circuit bosrd
The Review | Essay
How Are Students Really Using AI?
By Derek O'Connell
John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin