Opinion: The Common App is a Common Opp

College application season has arrived, which means it's that time of year when seniors have to log into the Common App and deal with the ever apparent stress of impending deadlines. In theory, the Common App is supposed to alleviate some of the anxiety surrounding applications. Yet, for many students, it only seems to add to the frustration they’re feeling. 

There are a plethora of issues students take with the Common App, but one of the biggest complaints has been in regards to the way it's set up. When you log into your Common App, you first fill out a generic application that gets sent to all the schools on your list. This includes your extracurriculars, standardized test scores, family information, and of course, your college essay. Each category has its own tab and each tab opens up to the specific questions. While this all sounds like a neat and easy way to look through everything, many students have struggled with missing certain details of their application, and consequently having to deal with sifting through question upon question to find the tiny thing they overlooked. When something isn’t filled out on the website, the entire section it's under doesn’t get checked off, which is a good thing, but there is no further subdivision for what is yet to be filled out. This lack of clarity has left many students frustrated and fed up with the time they waste going through the same stuff repeatedly to find one individual thing. 

Another major reason students feel more anxiety from the website is how they remind you of your application deadlines. I’ve heard many people complain about the bright red countdown clock that appears a few weeks before an application is due. The text next to it is in ominous italics, and for students doing their best to get their application done, seeing an ominous looking countdown as soon as you log-in does not spark a positive response. Rather than motivating students to work hard to get everything in order, it heightens their anxiety and makes the process ultimately slower, as they are more preoccupied with the feeling of impending doom than they are with completing the application. 

The last issue with the Common App that many students have is the personal essay as a whole. Of course, a personal essay has almost always been a part of the college application process, long before Common App. The essay in and of itself is stressful enough, but Common App adds broad prompts that, for many students, aren’t even released by the time they start working on their essays towards the end of Junior year. As a result of this, once students have completed their essays and are ready to plug them into their application, they have to spend too much time deciphering what each prompt is asking for to see if what they wrote fits. The stress of stretching your essay to fit a prompt, or needing to decide it doesn’t and choosing to submit one without a prompt, just makes the process more anxiety-inducing than it already is. 

Of course, Common App isn’t all bad. It’s far better than filling out an individual application to each college, each with the same general questions. It’s also significantly easier to have all your stuff in one place. The annoyances many people have in regards to the Common App are all quite small when compared to those of students applying to schools who don’t use it. However, overall, there are some major issues that come with Common App that should be addressed. The college process is stressful as it is, and Common App should not be adding to that stress.