<p>Apparently numerous kids are having problems submitting the common app (safari especially) and schools in receiving them. Stating the obvious - but please ask them to not wait till the very end (Oct 31st) to submit their early apps.</p>
<p>[Opinion:</a> College application insanity gets worse - CNN.com](<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/15/opinion/marcus-common-app-crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t4]Opinion:”>http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/15/opinion/marcus-common-app-crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t4)</p>
<p>I just happened to come across this opinion piece this morning.</p>
<p>Also students (and parents) should know that if there are problems with the Common App, neither the college nor their high school can address them. The student needs to contact Common App themselves. Colleges will be understanding–these issues are well known and widespread.</p>
<p>From today’s Inside Higher Ed:
[Common</a> Application glitches block students from applying | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/16/common-application-glitches-block-students-applying]Common”>Common Application glitches block students from applying)</p>
<p>We experienced problems just filling in what school my son attends. I’ve warned my son that he needs to finish early, but to a 17 year old I think that means 10 instead of 11:59 on the due date.</p>
<p>It has had a horrible user experience for years and years. If you think this is bad, wait until IDOC…IDOC doesn’t even have the ability to transmit in a secure manner electronically…gulp…in 2013 still.</p>
<p>some colleges like UNC Chapel Hill and Columbia have already extended their early decision/early action deadlines due to the common app issues</p>
<p>The College Counselor on the Insideschools (NYC schools) website posted this just today. Apparently the problems are widespread.<br>
[College</a> Counselor: Common App isn’t working](<a href=“http://insideschools.org/blog/item/1000745-college-counselor-common-app-isnt-working]College”>http://insideschools.org/blog/item/1000745-college-counselor-common-app-isnt-working)</p>
<p>Advisees have been having tons of problems. Previous tools aren’t available - the search engine is useless, you can no longer search the member requirements list or rank member colleges according to your criteria, the absence of a downloadable teacher rec version to print and work on makes it very, very hard for the older teachers (I don’t know <em>any</em> who haven’t complained about it), some teachers did not receive “recommendation” invitations, with budget cuts some counselors have to work out of two schools yet they can only fill out one school profile, some students who are dual enrolled or enrolled in international curricula can’t fill out the forms as they are designed, I could go on and on and on…
And, oh, I’ve had questions that took several days to elicit an answer from the technical team, something that never used to happen before (they were pretty good with the 24h limit and never once went over 48h.)
This new system really needs to be improved quickly. It’s already affecting schools and applicants - and ED deadlines are right around the corner so ED applicants are going to be affected.</p>
<p>An excerpt from Yale letter to prospective applicants.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>texaspg—
if yale reaches out to a school counselor instead of an applicant…95% chance the student will never find out and will default on having a completed application. when they find out it will be to late, and the college counselor will shrug their shoulders.</p>
<p>this is a bad situation.</p>
<p>Yale sent this to a prospective applicant not a counselor.</p>
<p>It was part of a longer note advocating for Yale but this paragraph was right at the beginning.</p>
<p>texaspg
"If a document is missing or improperly processed, a member of our staff will reach out to you or your school counselor directly. "
that was sent to a student informing them what may happen if the system fails…which states a counselor may be the one getting contacted.</p>
<p>The technical ‘teams’ at CA have been utterly unresponsive. My daughter has not been able to log onto her account for 2 weeks!!! We have received a total of 3 responses from them. 2 told her to reset her password which doesn’t work and the third just says that her problem is being addressed and to be patient. Really? 2 weeks and still waiting?</p>
<p>We had problems with the teacher recommendations. I finally just printed out the forms, made out self-addressed, stamped envelopes, and had my son deliver to his teachers. It is near-foolproof, I think…</p>
<p>I’m going to have him check before deadlines to be sure all info is in. I am not depending on his GC, I can see that she is overwhelmed.</p>
<p>the schools should not be exclusive on the use of the common app. me thinks yale could afford to have it’s own online system to apply …along with a lot of other schools.
p.s. rualum I hope you add some schools not using com. ap. to the list and apply to those. who knows your son may find and apply to a school that is perfect for him that he had never thought of before.</p>
<p>An article summarizes the situation:
[Common</a> Application Pandemonium | The College Solution](<a href=“http://www.thecollegesolution.com/common-application-pandemonium/]Common”>Common Application Pandemonium)
if you’re applying to Minnesota’s most selective colleges, you’re in luck since they found a way to bypass the CA mess:
[Minnesota</a> colleges find a way around the Common Application - Washington DC College admissions | Examiner.com](<a href=“http://www.examiner.com/list/minnesota-colleges-find-a-way-around-the-common-application]Minnesota”>http://www.examiner.com/list/minnesota-colleges-find-a-way-around-the-common-application)
Princeton and Harvard give the option of using the Universal Application:
<a href=“https://www.universalcollegeapp.com/[/url]”>https://www.universalcollegeapp.com/</a>
Not sure the UA is designed to handle major traffic ala CA, so hurry if you intend to use it. Right now it’s working very well.
Some good advice here:
[Common</a> App Solutions - Options for College](<a href=“http://www.optionsforcollege.com/commonappsolutions/]Common”>http://www.optionsforcollege.com/commonappsolutions/)</p>
<p>I don’t know why colleges get into this mess. It makes difficult for student in public HSs that don’t have enough resources to submit apps. My son had to resend teacher recs by snail mail to 2 schools after the GC uploaded recs to CA when he applied EA 5 years ago. I cannot believe after 5 years colleges still cannot simplify things. CA, IDOC are still the pain for students and parents.</p>
<p>From what I have seen, the colleges have aggressively moved closer to being totally online and some no longer even seem to offer snail mail methods.</p>
<h2>I got this from someone on FB - Sounds like a lot of PR but I do not see much translate into improving the situation for our kids who have 12 days to go.</h2>
<p>October 18, 2013</p>
<p>The last few days have comprised the most difficult period in The Common Application’s nearly 40 years of service to the education community. You have no doubt read news stories and social media conversations about the challenges facing applicants, recommenders, and member colleges. As an organization, we have been too slow to respond. That ends today. We have written this communication to highlight three core values of our mission, explain how we have fallen short in realizing them, and provide details about how we pledge to do better.</p>
<p>Reliability. For many users, the new Common Application has not been a reliable service. We have tried to be transparent in other communications regarding the various issues users have experienced since the August 1 launch. Many have been solved for all users, and others have been solved for most users. Nonetheless, individual applicants and recommenders are still encountering problems related to account logins, application submission, and document uploads. In some instances, our support team can easily solve these problems for users who contact us through the Help Center. In others, we continue to research patterns among the individuals affected to ascertain where the root cause lies. Further details about support volume and response efforts appear below. </p>
<p>Beginning next week, we will be using our School Officials newsletter list to send daily updates to the counseling community, and we encourage you to subscribe if you have not already done so. Counselors, we ask for your help in sharing these updates with your students and families. As much as we would like to communicate this same information directly to applicants, messaging 800,000 registered users would create too big a strain on the system, exacerbating the very problems we are trying to solve.</p>
<p>Our member colleges have faced similar disruptions in reliability, which have adversely impacted their internal processes. Members rely on us for the transmission of the documents and data needed to evaluate candidates, and each college has its own unique process and needs. We are in constant communication with these colleges to ensure they are prepared to receive and process applications and school forms, and we are confident that members will be able to do so successfully as major deadlines approach. To help you understand the complete landscape, we want to reinforce the following points:
Students are successfully submitting applications in record numbers.
Counselors and teachers using the Common App Recommender System are successfully submitting all school forms.
Counselors and teachers using Naviance are successfully submitting School Reports, Teacher Evaluations, and Early Decision Agreements. Implementation of Fee Waiver forms and Optional Reports is imminent for this group.
Final integration for Parchment users is imminent.
All member colleges have access to every single application document that has been submitted to them, though some are not yet able to import application data into their internal information systems, which is a critical processing step.
By highlighting these successful processes, we do not wish to minimize the challenges and frustrations of individual users and colleges, nor do we wish to paint a picture of a flawless system. Rather, we hope to convey in a responsible manner how the Common Application is functioning for the majority of users.</p>
<p>Service. Our online Help Center for applicants and recommenders has been operating 24/7 since October 1. Historically, our average response time has been well under one hour. In the past few weeks, our response time for many users has exceeded this average by an unacceptable level. This increase is due to the complexity of some of the issues mentioned above. The time-intensive research required to investigate certain payment and login problems has created a backlog that has extended to all users seeking assistance.</p>
<p>In the past 48 hours, we have released fixes that have resolved two of our most complex issues involving payment and the Chrome browser. The payment problem required intense collaboration with our third-party vendor. The browser challenges, which resulted from the unexpected release of a new version, prompted immediate collaboration with Chrome support. The solutions we implemented to address these issues resulted in a steep and immediate decline in new support requests. From Tuesday to Wednesday, applicant requests declined 73%, and recommender requests declined 43%. Also, prior to the payment fix, we were researching and reconciling thousands of payment records on a daily basis. On Thursday, that number was 6. This significant progress will assist us in addressing the backlog and return us to a more normal response time.</p>
<p>Many applicants, parents, counselors, and teachers continue to call for phone support, and we understand why. Speaking directly to a support representative is an assurance that one’s problems and frustrations are being heard and addressed. Unfortunately, given the volume of users who interact with our system, phone support would immediately become unsustainable. In addition, the system information that is transmitted when a user submits a request through our Help Center is often critical in helping us identify and solve the problem.</p>
<p>We assure you that every message submitted through our Help Center is evaluated by an individual member of our support team. These professionals work diligently to provide the most accurate and efficient assistance possible. There are times when the complexity of issues prevents them from responding as quickly as they or you would like, but they strive to provide the timeliest responses possible.</p>
<p>Accuracy is also a central component of service. To that end, our member services team will work closely with any colleges who wish to adjust their deadlines to ensure that the new dates are reflected within our system.</p>
<p>Integrity. If we lose sight of this value, the others cease to matter. Despite all the challenges we have faced, we have not forgotten the principles that guide us, even as we have struggled to attain them. We are unshakably committed to the mission of this association, and we pledge transparency and diligence as we work to fulfill it. </p>
<p>Many of you have grown weary of our continued pleas for patience and our assurances that we are working as quickly as we can to resolve outstanding issues. Your requests for precise timelines are understandable, and we would provide such details if we could. To do so, however, would be to make commitments that we might not be able to honor. With that in mind, we pledge to communicate as openly as possible regarding the challenges we face and our progress in addressing them. Moving forward, should we observe a widespread problem, we will inform you immediately using social media, even if the only information we can provide is an acknowledgement of the issue and a promise to share updates as they become available. For those of you who do not regularly follow social media, you can view our live Facebook and Twitter feeds directly on our website.</p>
<p>All of us who work with and for The Common Application–from the Board of Directors to the staff to our technology partners at Hobsons–understand the significance of this moment, both for the college application process and for the reputation of the association itself. To those of you who have offered words of support and encouragement, we thank you. To those of you who have lost faith in our ability to adequately meet the needs of you and your students, we understand. We need to regain your trust, and we know that the burden is on us to make that happen. We are confident that we will.
Board of Directors </p>
<p>President
Thyra Briggs
Harvey Mudd College </p>
<p>President-elect
Eric Furda
University of Pennsylvania </p>
<p>Past President
Carey Thompson
Rhodes College </p>
<p>Senior Counselor
Michael Pina
Greens Farms Academy </p>
<p>Danya Berry
Dayton Early College Academy </p>
<p>Jennifer Desjarlais
Wellesley College </p>
<p>Heidi Green
Fayetteville-Manlius High School </p>
<p>Monica Inzer
Hamilton College </p>
<p>Kevin Kelly
University of Massachusetts Amherst </p>
<p>Greg Roberts
University of Virginia </p>
<p>Gail Sweezey
Gettysburg College </p>
<p>Gil Villanueva
University of Richmond </p>
<p>Chris White
The Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High </p>
<p>Ex Officio Non-Voting Rob Killion
Executive Director
Common Application
Aba Blankson, Director of Communications
The Common Application, Inc.</p>