With rapidly approaching Early Decision deadlines, senior Eric Hilton finds applying to college extremely stressful. But an influx of glitches in the Common Application has actually helped Hilton out.
The same goes for senior Garrett Kaighn. And senior Ryan Ho. And many other seniors across the United States as over 40 colleges and universities have changed their ED deadlines.
For instance Columbia University has pushed back its Early Decision deadline from Nov. 1 to Nov. 8.
This change helps senior Cissy Shi who plans to apply early to Columbia.
“It was like heaven,” Shi said. “I pushed everything to the last minute, and this extra week gave me so much more time. The glitches didn’t cause me many problems in the first place.”
Designed to make college applications a simpler process, the Common Application has been in use for over 35 years. It allows the user to fill out only one main application and send it to multiple schools. Over 500 colleges use the Common Application.
This year the Common Application website was redesigned from scratch for the first time in six years. The glitches, such as sending error messages and failing to save entered data, are caused by faulty construction of the site.
According to college counselor Jane Bauman, SCDS students have not encountered many problems with the glitches, and she doesn’t expect many future problems.
The Common Application sends daily updates to Bauman explaining new errors and how to fix them.
