Common App involved w Early Decision Acceptance & Withdrawl other applications?

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

Hello, Does the Common Application get involved at all, and to what extent, with the process of legislating, accepting / rejecting the early decision acceptance and withdraw of other applications?

For example, if my S is accepted by his ED school, does the commonapp know this and then withdraw the other applications or stop further applications?

My S is quite excited and committed to his ED choice, however we are slightly nervous about the potential aid package and so have some other EA backups he likes as well. If the aid isn’t enough, we’d like to appropriately handle working with the ED school, discussing, negotiating, and hopefully-not-but-possibly withdrawing without the commonapp getting in the middle of it, adding a bunch of complications and messing with his other applications before he is clear who he needs to withdraw.

We’ve discussed this with his very supportive counselor and she thought that the commonapp is not involved at all with notifications, acceptances, rejections, waitlist, etc. but wasn’t 100% sure. Also, could not find anything on the commonapp help. As we brainstormed, she wondered if the commonapp has ever blocked a student’s entire ability to apply to any schools if a problem arose.

Does the commonapp get in the mix in any way that is useful to know about and be prepared to handle?

Out of curiosity, if he is not accepted from his ED school but they push him into the RD pool, do they somehow do something to reflect this in the commonapp? Or does it matter whether this is reflected or not?

Similarly, if he has applied ED1 and has to work out finaid with the school, can he cover his bases and start an EDII application if dates overlap while he is working out issues with his ED1 school, so that he doesn’t end up losing out with both schools? Is there some way we have to show the ED withdraw in the commonapp where some type of lag might interfere with his other applications?

We’d just like to know how this all gets intertwined upfront.

Thanks for any thoughts on offer,

Lily555

2

From what I understand, the common app is the vehicle for creating and submitting applications, but is not involved after the application is submitted for a particular school. At that point, the application goes to the schools and gets matched with the test scores, recommendations, transcript, etc, and the schools then manage things on their end through their own individual portals. With the schools that my kids applied to, once the app is received (or maybe after a few days), the schools email the applicants with a link to create an account through their own school specific portal.

I have never been involved with the school portals, but I have looked over my kids’ shoulders at a few of the portals and it looks like there are checklists and such about what has arrived. When decisions are made, many (although not all) schools post the decisions through the portals.

When my oldest accepted an offer of admission at her EA school, I feel pretty certain she accepted through the portal. She also withdrew 4 or 5 other applications that she had submitted. The common app was not involved at all, and after she submitted all of her apps, she only went on the common app to print out or save some of her essays for the records.

Some of the colleges had withdraw functions through the school portals, but at others she had to send an email to admissions since there was no way to withdraw online. I believe she sent an email to all of the schools as a backup and as a courtesy.

I believe the common app will allow an EDII app if the student does not get into EDI school. Your case is slightly different than that, but it seems as if you should be able to work out the decision before the EDII deadline. Another option - some schools will allow a RD application to be changed to EDII, possibly even after the deadline for EDII (as long as the application is submitted before the deadline). But you would have to check with the specific school on their rules.

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Can you apply both ED and EA at the same time?? I thought you could only apply ED to one school, OR EA to multiple schools.

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@Mimi2018 — While some colleges’ SCEA plans prohibit other early action or early decision applictions, most EA and ED plans do not restrict you from applying to other colleges EA. ED always trumps EA if you are accepted ED. Read each college’s EA or ED agreement language carefully.

OP, I believe you need to actively withdraw applications, but you need to be careful. You may only turn down an ED offer if you truly cannot afford it. Getting a better offer from an EA college is not sufficient grounds for withdrawal from ED, and both schools may end up rescinding their admissions offers; colleges seem to really have each other’s backs when it comes to ED.

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^ Good points from GreyKing. My other thought when reading your post (OP) is that if you can’t afford the ED1 school, why would things be any different for an ED2 school? Have you run the NPC to get a realistic idea of what your EFC might be?

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“Have you run the NPC to get a realistic idea of what your EFC might be?”

My impression is that NPC results can be depressing low in the amount of aid they will give and that in many cases they do not calculate in other factors such as merit, etc and that the reward could be much better once they look at your full application, take everything into consideration and really want the student.

Also ED1 and then ED2 with a different type of school if the ED1 aid was untenable, means you could get an entirely different aid package with the second type of school.

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Huge Thanks to everyone for your comments. This has been a very big help.