College applications are an overwhelming experience for most  seniors. Students work as hard as they can to get many college applications done by Thanksgiving break. This is where the Common Application comes into play.

The Common Application is a site where you can apply to many colleges all in one place. This makes it easier for students to submit more college applications at a time.

“[The Common Application] cuts down the time it takes on the main part of the application,” senior Rachel Bongart said.

According to the Common Application’s website, over one million students and school officials use their site annually through their free online First-Year and Transfer applications.

It’s easier for teachers and counselors to educate students about college applications with this site, which helps get seniors prepared for the overall process much faster.

“Teaching wise, it’s easier to teach the college essay layout and prompts because it’s much more difficult to teach if they were all different,” English teacher Jessica Frie said.

Not all colleges use the Common Application. These colleges have separate applications on their websites.

According to the Common Application website, their membership of over 500 public and private colleges and universities represent the full diversity of four-year higher education, in the U.S. and increasingly overseas.

“The latest version of the Common Application was released on August 1. Because it was released recently there were a few small glitches that needed to be figured out,” guidance counselor Katie Dorn said.

Many students around the United States started experiencing problems with the Common Application due to the large masses of students on the website at the same time. The server was either very slow or unresponsive for the students using the application.

All Wisconsin schools pushed back their early decision deadlines because of this problem.

The University of New Hampshire also reported problems from students using the Common Application and posted some helpful tips on their website concerning issues besides slowness.

Problems such as these set back many application deadlines, but the problems were reported quickly and were fixed within a couple of days.

Some students have been lucky and have experienced no problems with the Common Application whatsoever.

“I didn’t experience any problems when I used the Common Application. I didn’t even know of any until I heard of some of the problems from my friends,” senior Madison Dunkley said.

Few colleges in Minnesota use the Common Application, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota being one of the few. Many students at OHS tend to look out of state at colleges, but the ones who look in Minnesota, have more trouble finding colleges in Minnesota that use the Common Application.

When the Common Application is working properly and students are able to use it, this application is a very efficient tool for students applying to multiple colleges.

“If you are applying to many schools, this website is effective at making the process of applying faster,” Frie said.