Which colleges/universities have very quick/easy applications?

DS junior has an initial list of colleges/universities that he is working on currently and is targeting to reduce to 10. I read a thread recently that mentioned the application for University of Alabama (both Tuscaloosa and Huntsville) was very quick/easy and if I am not mistaken, there are no essay requirements, and the poster indicated it took less than 30 minutes to complete the entire application?

Which of these schools on his initial list will take very little time to complete?

UNC
NCSU
U Alabama
U Alabama Tuscaloosa
Duke
Rice
Vanderbilt
McGill
University of Waterloo
Carnegie Mellon
Georgia Tech
U Florida
FSU
Stanford
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Caltech
MIT
Northeastern

Thanks!

McGill is likely the quickest to complete. No essays, no listing of EC’s, no letters of recommendation. But if he doesn’t meet the published minima there is no need to apply.

@TomSrOfBoston I glanced at the prereqs and as he has very high scores across the board in STEM so it should not be a problem.

I guess the only potential issue is if he can keep his grades up but so far only one B in 9th grade when he blew off the final project and his high A ended up as a low B…hopefully he learned his lesson. Thanks very much!

I’m no Vandy expert, but I think the app only requires one personal essay and one short answer. That sounds a lot easier than most school’s on your S’s list.

Thanks, I would still like him to stop at 10 max but if his final list includes some of the schools with minimal requirements then perhaps he can do a few more.

Go to the common app and look at which have supplemental questions - we went through and looked at which questions have overlap or are very similar which allow an essay to be reused. Northeastern had a supplemental essay last year but then they removed it part way through the application season - not sure if it is back this year. If I recall correctly, Stanford had a lot of short answer questions.

But how about you or DS do the homework and figure it out? You can create a dummy common app account and pretend you are applying without actually applying. Or just google all the college application websites to find the answer. Not trying to be snarky but the info is out there and we’d all have to look it up to give you a comprehensive answer.

@DCCAWAMIIAIL Believe it or not we have a fairly detailed spreadsheet we share that now has columns incorporating common app, ease of completion, etc. I certainly was not asking anyone to do it for me but hoped some were in the middle of applications like we will be next year and would not mind sharing the info. Thanks.

@yearstogo A spreadsheet is a great way to keep track of things - that is exactly what we did! We actually had two - one that had detailed info about each potential school, where we crossed off the ones she decided against applying to - and a second one that had a list of all the to-dos related to applications, like send test scores, talk to teachers about recommendation letters, due dates, etc. I’m not really sure why we ended up with two but it seemed like once the decision of where to apply was made it was easier to track the to do stuff separately. And she made a file with a list of all the supplemental questions to identify overlap or common themes.

Unless something has changed the Florida schools UF and FSU were the worst of her 11 applications other than Tulane. When my daughter applied for class of 22 she had to manually enter her high school classes on another site and submit a resume. She linked the classes to each Florida application. She applied to UNC and NCSU which had supplemental essays. UNC was worse than NCSU. Any optional essay is not really optional. So from your list and our experience NCSU. From what I remember Clemson South Carolina and Virginia Tech had a quick application but not on your list.

Although you can likely use your common app essay for FL (and if memory serves, there are no additional essays unless you want to shoot for Honors College) it was one of the more quirky apps. That likely has changed as they’ve opened it up to the common app. Prior, and maybe still the case, student had to self report transcript info which was confusing and took S a lot of time.

@yearstogo McGill does not look at Grade 9.