My D is still finalizing her list of schools to apply to, but one thing that I have noticed based on her current list is that none of the 4 that she is likely to apply to early (EA or rolling) take the common app. Her high school seems to place a lot of emphasis on the common app, and I have seen the same thing on this site so I wonder if her situation is very unusual. In fact, one of her summer assignments is to write her common app essay and teachers will work on with them on it during the first two weeks of school.
Also wondering about how teachers recs work. Is this going to be more difficult since they aren’t common app? I did look at the rec form for one school and it had very specific questions, asked for boxes to be checked etc. I don’t think you could even do it electronically. The teacher who will be doing recs for my daughter said he would work on it over the summer, but how can he do that if we don’t know exactly which schools yet and don’t have the school specific forms.