As you probably know by now, the Common Application closes up shop at the end of July every year to refresh and reboot. Admissions deadlines and requirements up updated and supplemental essays are added, modified, or even deleted. On July 31st, the Common App came back online, ready, all ready for the Class of 2021! Seniors should start to fill out all the sections of the application and work on their essays as soon as they are able. And once that is done, here are some other ways seniors can use the Common Application to keep track of and on top of their college processes

1.     Add all the colleges you are intending to apply to to your Common Application account and then make sure that all those colleges are also on your Naviance or SCOIR account. If your school doesn’t use either of these services, let your guidance/college counselor know what your college list looks like.

2.     For each college, you will be asked to indicate what term you are planning to apply for (and for most of you that will be Fall, 2022 even if you are thinking about taking a gap year) and whether you’re are planning to apply Early Decision, Early Action, or Regular Decision. Answer this question to the best of your knowledge but DON’T sign (or have your parents or guidance counselor sign) the acknowledgment that you are applying ED until you are CERTAIN this is what you plan to do. By indicating your application plan, the Common Application will help you to keep track of your deadlines.

3.     You can link your Naviance account to your Common Application but first you’ll need to indicate if you are willing to waive your rights to see your recommendation letters. If you aren’t sure what to do here, please ask your college counselor to explain this to you.

4.     Invite your recommenders to submit their letters of recommendation through the Common App. Of course, be sure to ask them personally first. Although you won’t be able to see the letters they are writing on your behalf, the Common Application will let you know when those letters have been uploaded to your account.

5.     Start to work on your supplemental essays. The most efficient way to do this is to copy and paste the supplements for each college into a Google/word doc, being sure to capture the word count and any directions given. List your supplemental essays on this document in the order in which the applications are due. Then note any supplemental prompts that are duplicates for which one essay (perhaps with minor modifications) will suffice. Start to work on those supplements in the order in which they are listed.

6.     Just as you did for the supplemental essays, so too should you prepare other supplemental materials you are planning to submit. Most often this applies to students going into or with a strong background in the arts. Colleges will ask you to upload your materials to a SlideRoom account which you will create through the Common Application and that can be done now and materials uploaded as they become available. As you did with your supplemental essays, you might also want to create a Google/word document to keep track of the required – or optional – supplemental materials for each college.

While the most important thing for seniors to do is to put together the most compelling application they can, they should be sure to use the features and information provided on the Common Application to organize their college application processes. There are a lot of pieces to pull together but being organized, strategic, and proactive will help make this process more efficient, productive, and hopefully rewarding.