The common application locked us out of our account yesterday. It says the user name & password combination is incorrect. We tried to reset the password, but it won’t let us do that either.
There doesn’t seem to be a phone number available to call them?
We’ve exchanged several emails already through their help (doesn’t seem like very good help) page with no results - VERY frustrating!!!
@melvin123 The consultant helped to pick the kid’s ECs and summer activities? That seems odd to me too. My son has a fairly narrow range of ECs, but they reflect his true personality and interests. Perhaps this young woman is indeed following her heart, but it sounds as if her profile has been curated by an outside specialist for four years. Hmm. I wonder what she’ll do when she’s on her own in the real world.
@CuriousInCincy the consultant listened to what the girl liked and reviewed her list of existing ECs, and let her know that one of her ECs was a tremendous time suck, and ultimately not something that the girl was interested in, and gave her some ideas of outside ECs that would advance her interests. This counselor was aware of a lot of different summer and year round opportunities that this family hadn’t been aware of. Personally, I thought this sounded ideal and wish that everyone’s HS GC would be able to help kids as much. The thought that kept going through my head is how much time this person saved that family, and how she enabled that girl to start from such a higher level. I’ve been feeling all throughout HS that there are opportunities out there, but I had no idea what they were or how to access them for my child. I’ve gained a lot of knowledge on CC, but I feel like there is still so much more that I don’t know about, and that I don’t even know what I don’t know.
Re four-year college consultants, it doesn’t really surprise me but I wonder how much the kid wanted it. Judging from many of the students posting here on CC, I bet plenty of driven students looking at prestigious schools would have loved to have that kind of help from an early age. Even in our house, we had those conversations with S starting freshman year. We visited Stanford freshman year because we were in the area for vacation and had a free morning, and he liked the school. I remember telling him then about the very low admit rate and the need to excel in interesting ways (plus have volunteer hours and demonstrated leadership) in order to be competitive for schools like Stanford. We didn’t push him to do anything and we certainly never thought about hiring a consultant to pick his activities, but I can absolutely see that happening in certain circles.
@melvin123 Great point. That does sound like a very helpful assist. There’s so much out there – no one person can know it all.
I’ve been lurking for the past few weeks but want to chime in on the consultant. I live in an area where families have high incomes and are highly educated, very similar to suburban NYC. Hiring a college counselor is the a norm because 1) many of the students are looking at the most selective schools and 2) they can afford it. The focus is how to find ways to help your child stand out and getting guidance on ECs can make a significant difference at schools like Stanford. We saved to hire a counselor because it is a stressful process and when I realized how much things had changed in the college application process, I knew we couldn’t do it alone and just rely on the school GCs. Our counselor has been great and the best thing about it is having another voice that your kid can turn to for advice and someone who has actually seen many successful college applications. We took our kids to visit an Ivy before the college process started so they could understand what they would need to do if they wanted to be in the game for tippy-top schools. My oldest worked her tail off after that initial Ivy visit it was a great motivator. She has the stats but it’s still a crap shoot no matter what.
However, I’m very disturbed by the college process overall and how much of it is a series of hoop jumping - to me it is a process that exploits so many inequities in our society and culture. And I say that knowing full well that I’m participating in it and using every advantage I have to help my child go where she wants to go.
Welcome @zomaya99 - I agree with a lot of your post.
My daughter is not among most of the CC kids here, either in stats or in goals. She is one of very few kids in her class to even have a college list at this point, let alone having visited them over the summer, and probably one of a handful to have her essays nearly done. She’s not applying to any Ivy Leagues, and to be honest the schools she wants to apply to are not tippy top. Her program and other parameters determined that list, which somehow is a bunch of matches and safeties.
I’ve used what I’ve learned here to fuel the college search - joining and reading CC is the single best thing I think I’ve done in this application derby. I’ve gotten so many tips and so much advice here. No need for a consultant in our case, but it would be interesting to figure out just how much they help versus doing it by oneself with a lot of sought-out information like CC and other sites.
@zomaya99 Sonce you mentioned the inequalities in the college process, this is one that has been bothering me lately. I have brought up my financial situation quite often and have probably bored and annoyed people with it.
Given our family size and the area where we live, we are lower income. But we have decent savings through conscious planning for our family’s future and frugal living.
I come from a family where no one has ever had high income and my H is an immigrant.
Because of our family background and living abroad, H and I never had the opportunity to learn about protecting savings in retirement accounts. And because of that, for financial aid purposes, our savings (=our retirement) will take at least a 5% hit each year, and we have three more kids to get through college.
It seems to me, if someone was had the right cultural and financial background, their retirement savings would be protected.
To be honest, I’m curious why certain funds should not be included in financial aid calculations, because it seems based in cultural and financial inequality.
Why not just assess all assets equally but perhaps at a lower rate for financial aid purposes? Maybe that would be even impact lower income people worse and I’m just missing something.
Welcome @zomaya99 ! I have to chime in to say that what @bearcatfan said applies to us as well, almost exactly. I agree that this process has become bloated and riddled with inequities. I also think having a consultant can be helpful, especially if it saves family relationships by putting all those app and essay nagging tasks on to an outsider! ;)) Alas for us we’ve come this far, I think we’ll make it through on our own.
D hit a non college milestone last night. She drove on her own to a friend’s house for the evening! :-SS She got her license just before her surgery and since it’s her left foot that’s affected, she can drive. She’s been driving around with me since surgery, mostly because she’s had nowhere to go and is still recovering. But she’s 6 weeks post surgery now, doing well and so off she went! She came home beaming! :x It was so great for her to get out, see this friend, and have a bit of Independence. She really needed that.
I hope nobody is having the same common app problems as we are. 3 days now & we can’t get on. They just keep sending the same email asking us to try resetting the password.
I know they must be swamped and all & I haven’t tried to act like a jerk or anything; in fact, I’ve gone out of my way to word my requests as nicely as I know how. I’ve asked if there is any way to speak with a tech person on the phone, but those requests seem to go unanswered. I’ve asked if I can speak with a supervisor with the same result. I’ve looked all over & can’t find an actual phone number yet so I can try to call - I guess that’s by design.
I even emailed the help center & suggested that (if they can’t figure it out) I’d be willing to have them just delete my whole account & try to start over. No response to this offer - just the suggestion to try resetting the password.
I’ll keep trying & let you all know how it turns out just in case you find yourselves in a similar situation. I sure hope this doesn’t happen to someone late in the admissions season when time is more critical.
Details: it was a practice account that we set-up to get used to the common app. On Aug 1st all of the information we had input rolled over so we figured we could just keep that account & started inputting info. 3 days ago, I got the bright idea of changing the password & everything worked fine until the next day when we found ourselves locked out. When we try resetting the password again, we get the message: “unable to reset password. please try after sometime.” That’s where we find ourselves now: We can’t log-in & the common app reps keep sending the same email suggesting we try resetting the password.
If anyone has any suggestions, I’m willing to try anything as I’m running out of ideas. ~X(
Ugh! I’m so sorry you’re having this problem, @LMHS73. I don’t have any suggestions for you, but hang in there.
Oh @LMHS73 I am so sorry for your common app struggles! I poked around on the “inside” to see if I could find a phone number or anything that might help you, but there was nothing. :-S I am stressed on your behalf!
One thing I noticed is they do have pretty strict requirements on their passwords, so maybe that is causing the hang up? They want 10-32 characters, with an uppercase, a lower case, a number, and a special character. I have sometimes had trouble with systems that have such requirements letting me reset to a password that doesn’t meet them and then not being able to log back in because my password isn’t sufficient.
The only other thing I can think to do is create a new account with a different email address, but that would cause you to lose all the work you’ve already put in.
Another avenue might be getting in touch with any of the schools he plans to apply to that are common app only schools to let them know he’s having a problem and they (common app) are not providing support.
Good luck!!
Welcome @zomaya99 - I’m another one to agree with you, @bearcatfan, and @1822mom about college consultants. We did hire one for exactly the reason @1822mom mentioned… the essays! :)) She isn’t one of the ones that get involved early and she isn’t one that helps pick ECs. She just helped him with his essays - pulled ideas out of him that I could never get out of him 
, she also helped edit and revise them without me nagging him. That in itself was worth the money!
The thing I keep thinking about is how the kids must feel after they submit their applications. My son only applied to one school, he is an auto-admit (we live in Texas- so it is a sure thing), and even though he knows he will get in, he is a nervous wreck. Last night I asked him if he was going to submit an app to UT and he said no, he doesn’t want to do another app. He is so over it! I keep reading on CC about all the apps kids submit and I can’t help to think we are doing something wrong. Is my kid limiting himself? Should I push harder? This whole process drives me crazy… I don’t think our household will calm down until the acceptance letter arrives. X_X
@LMHS73 I wonder if the issue is that it is a practice account?
I have a practice account as a parent … is that what you mean? Did you set it up as a student? I guess that wouldn’t account for the password issue but if it’s a practice account you can’t use it to apply, anyway. I guess I’d try setting up a new account like @1822mom suggested.
When it was giving me fits the other day I used appsupport@commonapp.net
I also, in a fit of pique, emailed media@commonapp.org. They are more the public relations branch of the thing, but they did seem responsive.
I hate to hear of your issues @LMHS73. We don’t have to mess with the common app so I’m no help but it looks like you are getting good suggestions. Best of luck!
2nd app submitted last night and 3rd should get submitted by the end of the weekend. After that we are going to wait until the Sept ACT to determine if any others are even needed.
You all know my D, right? The one who loves the Canadian schools? The one who has always said “No Texas” and “No LACs”? Yeah. Well, we visited Trinity in San Antonio today and she loved it. I mean, loooooved it. :-?? So did S20. I suspect D may have been influenced by the fact that there was a soccer camp going on this week, so there were a lot of athletes on our tour, and she feels very much at home amongst the scholar-athletes. Still, Trinity seems to have a very active and athletic culture. She’s going to email the swim coach. She might be a good fit for their swim team. She will definitely apply, possibly forgoing UT-A and Indiana. I feel good knowing that she’ll be more focused going into the application process. Trinity seems to be the non-Canada option she was looking for. WHEW.
I’ll write more later about Trinity and Southwestern. They are way more different than I would have expected.
So, let me contrast Trinity and Southwestern, two small schools in (south?) central TX, from an out-of-stater’s perspective. I loved them both, but my kids heavily preferred Trinity.
Southwestern has about 1500 students and is in the impossibly charming Georgetown. The campus is breathtakingly beautiful; one of the prettiest I’ve seen. Old, limestone buildings with lush vegetation. Most walkways are naturally shaded. It feels very peaceful and serene. On our tour, there was a bias towards the fine arts and personal connections, both student-student and student-professor. Everything was intimate and personalized. Our tour group was small, and all of the prospective students’ names were posted at the front of the admissions office with a big “Welcome.” Very nice touch. The admissions presentation was genius. Our AO spent a lot of time talking about LACs (knowing they are rare in this part of the country), CTCL, and Paideia, the concept that every academic discipline is connected. What was brilliant is that while discussing these topics, she artfully demonstrated what a Southwestern class might be like. It was very interactive and engaging. I’m a believer, even if my kids aren’t.
Trinity U, on the other hand, felt sleek and modern and high-tech. AOs were in suits. (Our AO at Southwestern was in a tshirt and jeans. One is not better than the other; just different.) There were at least 50 people there for a tour that day. Trinity bills itself as an LAC Plus. There are 2300 undergrads, plus a couple hundred grad students. They have some pre-professional programs, and a grad program or two. They seem to have a good relationship with San Antonio, and Trinity grads are well-represented in the city (and beyond: the complimentary KIND bars in the admissions office were courtesy of the founder/CEO of KIND, a Trinity grad). Facilities are fantastic. Three swimming pools?! They are obviously very well-funded. Dorms, all suites, are beautiful and modern. There is a much more energetic buzz here than at Southwestern. The emphasis on our tour seemed to be on the school’s amazing resources, specifically their STEM facilities and connections to specific businesses in the city. They say they are a small school with big school resources. I can’t help but wonder how much more competitive admissions would be at Trinity if it were located on the east coast.
I have no doubt that students will get a fantastic education at either school. It’s all about fit.
Thanks everyone for the common application advice & ideas. I’m happy to say that we’re able to log-in again & all of the information we already entered is still there.
It doesn’t seem like too much of a “rocket science” kind of fix. They sent me a new log-in password to get in and then advised me to change it to a different password once I logged-in. I followed those instructions and everything worked!
This seems like a simple fix so I’m just taking a wild guess that they’re probably inundated with requests to fix little glitches in the system since is just opened a few days ago. Maybe they send a few initial response emails saying to try resetting the password to buy a little time before they are actually able to take a look at your issue?
I don’t know - just happy we’re back in the game!
So just for reference, it took them about 2 1/2 days to get to me & fix the problem. Not too bad I guess.
D18 started on the Common App tonight (shocker!). There are couple of issues that she ran into:
Thanks
@droppedit, that sounds about right. For “Honors” we listed NHS, honor roll, AP scholar, all-state academic team, & we’ll add NMSF when the results come out. I think you get 5 items for that part right? For “Activities” (10 items I think) it was the clubs, volunteer service, work, sports, and some summer activities.
Just FYI: if you ask these type of questions through the common application help page, you’re likely to get the answer to use your discretion or ask your guidance counselor. We have USC(w) as one of Ds college choices & they have a section that asks you to list all classes taken in all grades 9-12 and asks for credits per class, final grade in class, & things like that. It specifically asks you to put down this information exactly as stated on the HS transcript. Well we couldn’t do that because the credits earned per class on her transcript were different than any of the choices in the pull down box. Also, there are no “final” grades reported on the transcript. LONG story short, I asked for guidance on this from the common app help page & that was my answer: “use your discretion or ask your guidance counselor.”