Why the College Application Process is Hell for Everyone

And how we can all survive it

For most people, November is a month where the leaves have almost all fallen from the trees, the scarves come out of the closet, and the turkey goes into the oven.

For high school seniors, November is a month of deadlines, battles with grades, long nights of essays, and a cornucopia of stress and frustration. In any other year of my life, November would probably be right up there with my favorite months, but this year it brings a whole lot of Hell.

It’s application season, and it’s in full swing, baby.

Many fellow seniors have already sent out one or two applications, and may have heard back already from some safety schools or even their top choice. For them, November is a sigh of relief that they have escaped the panic of uncertainty. And kudos to them! Their proactive applying saved them a world of stress. Others, especially those using the CommonApp, have already experienced an absolutely wonderful roller coaster of fun.

The Common Application, an online application accepted by the majority of private schools in the U.S., is used by most students in the country for at least one school. The concept, in theory, provides students with one main application to fill out all of their interests, activities, class rank, personal info, and stuff like that. In addition, there is a required essay from which the student has five options to write about in under 650 words. Many schools then also require multiple school-specific writing supplements to get what they want from applicants.

Now,in theory, there are some great advantages to sticking it all in one place. It saves students the time of typing in all of their extracurricular activities and re-entering pages of information for each school they apply to. In theory this would save students quite a bit of stress. But in execution this year, it failed. And when important website applications fail (cough cough, healthcare.gov), they tend to fail hard, and the effects can be large.

The CommonApp’s website had issues with formatting essays, problems saving information, eliminating document uploads (WHY?), recommendation letters failing to go through, school reports being rejected by the server for being too large, eliminating the topic of choice essay, and crashing upon login.

After slow responses from the company, we then discovered the infuriating news that the entire website with all of that precious information that would lead to one of the biggest decisions of a student’s life was under the massive operating staff of eight employees. Yes, the website that controls the path of millions of applications annually is maintained by eight employees. Even as incredible and efficient as I’m sure those eight employees are, no website that processes that large of a volume of critical personal information should be maintained by that small of a number.

It’s just CommonSense that launching an updated CommonApp wouldn't be without glitches, and that eight people can’t fix it anywhere near quick enough to satisfy the amount of people trying to apply to college at the same time.

The issues and complaints that followed got to the point where things were just not getting any better, so many schools responded by extending Early Action and Early Decision deadlines from the usual November 1st to November 8th.

While it gave students a little longer to lose sleep over creating the perfect essay, parents still had a world of worries.

Is the extension even going to matter if the application still doesn't work? Does the week delay mean a delay in response? Or does it mean admissions has one less week to deliberate, thus rushing my child’s application? What happens on November 8th, when the majority of people will all be trying to submit at once?

Mom, Dad, don’t worry. We can make it through this together.

The frustration is universal. I can’t imagine admissions offices being happy with this delay. My family freaked out. My friends ranted endlessly. Even my counselor was annoyed by the difficulties of submitting documents on her end. In fact, in the end, we ended up sending all of my school paperwork by fax, which to be honest, would have been much easier in the first place.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the online application revolution. Is this the death of the CommonApp? Probably not. Besides the obvious issues technologically, the homogenization of the application process through one universal application to me seems detrimental to both sides.

Students are tied down to character limits to describe their activities and interest. Schools only get a short essay on why the student wants to attend. Students can’t write about what they want to write about. Schools lose crucial knowledge about what interests that student enough to be written about. Students become numbers. Schools become forced to rely on those numbers (ACT, SAT, Class Rank, Grades, GPA) more than the character of the student that could be leaving a change or incredible new legacy on their campus.

If more schools just allowed a student to run free with their writing and deliver them an essay that really shows why they fit at that respective school, no word limits (or within reason) and no bland, generic topic, then the entire process would be less stressful and more true to the character of the applicant. Not only that, but I think it would help the applicant realize why they would fit in at that school tremendously.

While writing my “why this school?” statement for the college I decided to apply Early Decision to, I realized that I really, really wanted to go there even more than I did before, but I didn't have enough room under the 300 word limit to get it all out. It helps students to see themselves at each of these schools, and if it comes down to it, make a decision between two.

Is going back to paper applications the right idea?

Eh, probably not. Who knows what the USPS will be like in five years? On top of that, who knows what the internet will be like in five years? Right now, online applications are simple and great when they’re working properly. If we can just make the application process less assembly-line and more expressive, I think that students, families, and colleges will all benefit.

That said, I wish all of you seniors and your families the best of luck making it through the painful waiting period before you find out. No matter what happens, you can make things work out. And don’t forget to try and enjoy/survive (depending on how you feel about high school) the last little bit of high school left!

Juniors, enjoy your freedom while it lasts.