<p>D has applied to 5 or 6 schools so far (I just transfer money to pay the fees so I'm not sure). The only schools that have confirmed receipt of application are the two that she applied via their own form. As she's already experienced a problem with a payment via the Common App site, my feelings for the Common Application are neither warm nor fuzzy. </p>
<p>Are you all as frustrated as I or has it been working well for you?</p>
<p>The common app is awful. Make sure she answers every single question even if she has no answer for a question. She must check something: there is usually a “no answer” answer. The app part won’t be done until she does this.
To add a teacher for recommendations, you have to click “add another” on the recommendation page. It’s not very clear. </p>
<p>If you have several apps in there and are submitting more than one at a time, make sure the preview has the right one. Mine was taking the previous app and putting it in the PDF. So Ithaca would show up when I was submitting Boston. I would have to exit out and do it again. Then it would have the right one. </p>
<p>After you pay and after you submit, you still have to get to a signature page to be done. In order to get that you select submit again even though you will feel like you already did that.
Once you have all green check marks on the dashboard you are done.
I would help your D. It is not user friendly. What I am saying here probably makes no sense but when you get in there it will. Good Luck. I am happily in green check mark land!!</p>
<p>Oh, no, she’s been through all of that. She got the signature page and all and is getting concerned that she hasn’t received any emails with login information from the schools. This has happened after applying to a school, paying the fee for the school, receiving a confirmation for the payment and then being brought back to the payment page as if nothing happened. The funds cleared the bank two days later too. That’s when I decided to email them every day until they fixed it. They finallly did, but I think, overall, the site is extremely buggy.</p>
<p>I’ve seen other parents on this forum state that their children have received academic acceptances and wondered if the common app is failing us only! With all the stress of applying as an MT major, do we really need common app issues too?!!! GRRRRR!</p>
<p>I’m not warm and fuzzy on it either.</p>
<p>CCM has published they are having issues with the Common App. The admissions rep. he spoke with said they hope to have information out to all that applied already by the end of the month…which is here.</p>
<p>He was succesful so far with Rider but he just noticed the program is listed as BM in Music Theatre not BFA on his application status so he contacted the admission dept. </p>
<p>Ithaca is paid for but when he selects “submit” the PDF won’t load…I’m glad I read this re: checking to make sure the correct school is there.</p>
<p>He’s having trouble attaching his essay to CMU. I’ll let you know tonight if it works, my sig. other worked on the laptop and we upgraded office to make sure it wasn’t our issue.</p>
<p>So far he’s had way more success applying directly. His only academic acceptances have come from applying direct. Had we known he would have taken that option when he could vs the common app.</p>
<p>I KNEW IT!!! Direct applications are the way to go, but most of the schools use the Common Application EXCLUSIVELY. <em>insert grumbling here</em></p>
<p>D seemed to have no issue with CMU. Her dashboard shows a green check for the supplement. Did Ithaca truly have no supplement? I couldn’t find anything on their website and there’s a red dash for it on the dashboard. D has been fiercely independent refusing my help since she was months old. Right now I’m “running in the background” to make sure things are done properly. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses so far, Parents!</p>
<p>MTMajorCook, for Ithaca did you submit payment and then you’re sent back to the payment screen, but received payment confirmation?</p>
<p>We don’t have any academic acceptances yet. But we couldn’t get her school to send transcripts until sept 9, and then we filled out their form “wrong,” twice, so the transcripts are probably just arriving now.
Preview carefully!</p>
<p>Just wanted to let you guys know that the college counselors at my school just got back from a national conference and reported at today’s faculty meeting that the colleges themselves are having a <em>terrible</em> time with the new Common App. Glitches apparently are the norm. Most of our high school’s seniors are applying early action or early decision, so they asked us (teachers) to submit our recommendations at least a week prior to the deadline as they fully expect to encounter problems when the kids upload their applications (and the schools send the school materials). Hang in there!</p>
<p>We have decided to apply directly whenever possible. We found the common app “buggy” too. It is just easier for us to keep track of everything including transcripts and rec letters, if we do it individually. Frankly, with all of the bugs I am hearing about, I don’t really trust them to send out the proper emails for the transcripts and rec letters. I guess just call me paranoid!</p>
<p>GSOMT - I’m not sure if that happened to him for Ithaca or not. This evening the PDF loaded and he was able to submit both Ithaca and CMU without issues.</p>
<p>His GC told him he submitted transcripts to Rider on Friday, so far its not showing up online. I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the Common App or not.</p>
<p>That’s great, MTMajorCook. I seems to me that the commom app is hit or miss. It may not work one day and work fine the next. D was checking her myithaca last night and nothing seemed to be updated in addition to two other schools not being updated so she sent out a round of emails. We hate feeling like we’re paranoid about the system not working, but, um, we are!!</p>
<p>I know! I feel like I’m double checking on things constantly. But as I’ve said I have a “carefully crafted audition schedule” that hinges on the apps getting at least on file.</p>
<p>S’s Music/Chorus Teacher sent his recommendation directly to CCM vs submitting through the Common App…now they don’t know whether to have it resubmitted via Common App or not because CCM is still having issues…sigh. He emailed CCM but I am sure they are unindated with emails about scheduling auditions, which no one can do until they receive a login. :|</p>
<p>And I thought the easiest part would be submitting the application. Hopefully, by mid-October this will all be a distant memory…hopefully.</p>
<p>The Common App did a major systems upgrade/modification this year, and it sounds like it is pretty buggy. However, most colleges still strongly prefer that the Common App be used if it is available. It is still a lot easier for them to receive and process an app electronically than on paper. I think the colleges are well aware of this year’s issues and won’t hold it against anyone.</p>
<p>Also, it is often the college and not the Common App causing a delay when the school does not send you a logon. Some person at the college has to do that, and I know it took over a week sometimes last year for the email to come (I think one college took two weeks). And… the emails are sent to your kid (unless you had the sense to set up a separate email account just for college apps that you shared with your kid, which we did not :(). So if your kid is anything like mine, a couple of times the email came and she forgot to tell me/didn’t realize it.</p>
<p>Also, it can take weeks for something like a transcript or recommendation to show up as received by the college. Again… the colleges update that on their websites, and they are often flooded with applications and don’t get it done right away.</p>
<p>I only had the sense to set up a separate e-mail account for all things college that both my D and I can access because of the recommendation from a post here on CC. Best thing ever! I think it was on one of the Hindsight threads.</p>
<p>The UC/CCM issue is extremely frustrating because I wonder if anyone is really working on it. I don’t believe the message on the site has changed at all and it’s September 27th. Yes, paranoia has officially set in!!</p>
<p>UC/CCM - for real. My S applied August 29th, I think, hasn’t received a login. I wonder if anyone has yet. I noticed one page on their site stated 10/01, I’m not sure how long that’s been on the page it was the first I noticed it.</p>
<p>Scratch what I said about CMU, even though the payment has cleared my account every time he tries to submit it takes us back to the payment screen.</p>
<p>^^ OH, email the common app folks about that. You can attach the payment confirmation received. I had printed it to .pdf so I had it handy. I spent a very long time trying to figure out how to email them. In case you don’t know it’s in the Help Center on the Ask A Question tab, pick your subject and ignore the popular topics and click “my answer is not here”.</p>
<p>MTMajorCook, D said that she received a response to her email to UC/CCM. The counselor said that the CCM applicaton should be out in a few days.</p>
<p>My son submitted the CA with supplements for CMU last night. I received the e-mail confirmation for payment but not the e-mail confirmation for App submission. I went to the CA site, and they report that if you don’t receive e-mail confirmation for submission in 24 hours, the e-mail probably went to spam (nope, not there). What concerns me it I usually receive both e-mails within minutes of each other. And yes, it won’t have been 24 hrs. until 8:30. The CA site states his app and supplements were successfully submitted. </p>
<p>The rub came today when I attempted to register my son for his CMU audition and the page reported they hadn’t received the app. My hope is the process has slowed down due to volume, and I’m just being neurotic! My son can only audition at the NYC and Chicago Unifieds and now my mind is going down the road that he won’t get a slot.
I need to chill out, and ironically, I thought I was handling the stress well. Obviously not so much if this bump in the road de-railed me so easily.</p>