Common Application or Common App is an application which you can use to apply to multiple universities very efficiently. There are more than 900 member colleges from the USA, Canada, Japan, China and many European countries. So, it is most likely that you will find your desired university here.
Universities require you to submit a lot of information about you including your personal information, family information, education background, extracurricular activities details, test scores, high school transcripts, recommendation letters, essays etc. when you are applying for undergraduate admission. While applying to multiple colleges, sending all this information individually to each of the universities is an extremely time-consuming process. Fortunately, the common app here makes the work a lot easier for you.
You can easily open a first-year student account at commonapp.org. After opening an account, you will see a tab named “college search” at the top. In this tab you will find the list of all the member colleges. From that list you can choose up to 20 colleges to apply to. After selecting your desired colleges, all your selected colleges will be found on the “my colleges” tab. On your that tab, all your selected colleges will be listed with their application deadlines, writing supplement requirements, testing policy etc. This will make a lot easier for you to work on your college application.
So how are you supposed to send them your information from here? On the “common app” tab at the top, you will find a list of information to fill in about you. You can input all your information there including your personal essay, test scores, extracurricular activities etc. Here you will be asked all sorts of questions that universities generally need to know about their applicants. Some exceptional writing supplements or a few questions that your college may require you to answer will be found in the “college information” section under that particular college name in your “my colleges” tab. And you can easily answer them from there. You will also be able to pay your application fee or apply for an application fee waiver from your common app account.
From your common app account, you can request your teachers and high school counselor for recommendation letters. Your high school counselor will upload your high school transcripts for you on his/her common app account. They will also upload recommendation letters and answer a few other questions about you on their common app account.
All this information will be sent to the colleges when you submit your application to them. It is very efficient to use common app to apply to colleges, but not very easy. It takes quite a lot of time to completely fill up the common application. You should start earlier. Common app for a class year usually open around August or October of the previous year. You should start earlier than that and gather all the components. Keep in mind that you have to impress the college admissions committee with your application. So, make sure your application is honest and uniquely presented that will impress the admissions committee.