<p>Hi, I have looked for answers but can't find anything specific. As my D begins to apply what is recommended? Online Or mail? What is looked more favorably upon and is given greater consideration? Thanks for your input.</p>
<p>And I forgot something else…use the common application Or college specific?</p>
<p>100% use the online app if there is one. Otherwise someone at the college has to data enter your kid’s info anyway. It is FAR more convenient and efficient for the colleges to accept an electronic application.</p>
<p>I would say use the Common App when you can, it is also more convenient for you. Many colleges have their own essay prompts anyway where you can write something specific for them (in fact, are required to).</p>
<p>Many schools waive the fee when applying online. The paper app will usually have a fee attached.</p>
<p>Many schools now only accept the online application. If you are applying to Common App schools, its all online. That’s the best way as you only have to write the basic essays and list the EC’s one time. Many schools also have supplements and they are much easier online as well. Paper apps are nearly extinct.</p>
<p>Would you really want to your kid to go to a college that would value an applicant more based upon whether they used a paper or electronic application?</p>
<p>Oh how we (that’s the collective “we”) agonized over this in 2005. There were people who wanted to use their own fonts, higher quality paper, control whether sheets were paper clipped or stapled or neither of the above, blah blah blah blah.</p>
<p>But that was 2005!</p>
<p>When the whole online thing was new.</p>
<p>Schools are choosing applicants based on the content of the application, not the form.</p>
<p>And they want what’s efficient.</p>
<p>Online.</p>
<p>Thanks! Lol. Please understand I am so new to this.</p>
<p>^^ Welcome. And enjoy the ease of your kid doing everything online. You can save the agonizing for whether or not to buy twin XL or regular length sheets. :)</p>
<p>Online. Common app + the school’s supplemental app. For the VAST majority of schools anything that you send via snail-mail is going to be pulled apart from the beautiful cover/binding your student packaged it in and scanned so it’s online anyway. They don’t want paper. You only THINK you have choices. ;)</p>