<p>I'm saying that they would tell you if that was the case. (I suppose some schools DO say so; but I've seen plenty that say they accept the Common Application without any warnings or qualifying words.)</p>
<p>Schools tell you that your application is improved if you visit campus and/or have an interview...so why would you think that they'd use an applicant's use of the Common Application as a tiebreaker without advising the applicants of that? Providing a Common Application option is an affirmative step that schools take and publicize. It would be downright sinister for an Admission Office to secretly devalue an application because an applicant exercised a choice that the school offered and promoted -- even if it was an "all other things being equal" scenario.</p>
<p>I am right there with anyone who decides to use the school-specific application. It's not just understandable...it's exactly what I would do. But let's recognize that that choice is made on the basis of fear, not fact.</p>
<p>No doubt you're right. After going through this whole process and stressing out all the time I've probably become a bit paranoid :) .</p>
<p>I posed this question in another thread and appreciate the responses I’ve received. After doing a little more research on the subject of using the common application or not, my daughter has decided not to use the common form. Not due to “fear”, but because the school’s applications typically allow a student to bring out information about herself which may be important to the school (or at least distinguish the student in the school’s eyes.) The essay questions on the common app are very generic: Who’s influenced you, why are you interesting, describe an event that changed your life. </p>
<p>Compare those questions to ones from some of the schools she’s interested in:
1. What might we learn about you if we were given the opportunity to see your room?
2. Tell us about a character in a book to whom you particularly relate.
3. Imagine you are writing your autobiography. Submit page 179
4. What makes you laugh out loud?
5. If you could travel back in time, where would you go, and whom would you visit?
6. George Bernard Shaw stated that: “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.” Tell us about one of your glorious mistakes. What went wrong?
7. Complete the following sentence and the Principal's message: The Principal of a high school walks into an auditorium and exclaims, "Thanks for gathering. I have some mind-boggling news about..."”</p>
<p>The Common Application won’t hurt your chances, but it won’t allow you to showcase your personality as well as most of the individual applications. Plus, using the school's application allows the Admissions Committee to compare your application directly against the others--they're comparing apples to apples, instead of apples to oranges.</p>
<p>D'yer Maker wrote:</p>
<p>The question, then, is why do schools give applicants that option? </p>
<p>Is it a sick, twisted psychological game they are playing? Because that's what it is if they're thinking, "Aha! Jim Varney decided to send in the Common Application! We can assume he's not 'earnest' about coming to Wonderful Academy since he chose that option. He's really just throwing it in over the transom, so we'll take his application fee and throw a rejection letter back over the transom."</p>
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<p>Here's the reason. Because it is SO MUCH easier to use the common applications when applying to multiple schools, kids apply to more and more schools. So the schools get more applications, which not only means more application fees (de minimis really, considering the time and investment school makes in reading apps), but more importantly also to a higher selectivity for the school.</p>
<p>No doubt you're correct. M2aU. Which means that it's likely that, overall, less qualified and less interested applicants are availing themselves of the Common Application, but it does not mean that for any given applicant that their chances go up or down because they chose "correctly" or "incorrectly." To the contrary, if there is a difference in the % admitted with one form versus the % admitted with the other, you just explained why that difference is based on the applicants, not the choice of form.</p>
<p>D'yer - I think this is true at the very very top end of the applicant pool for a particular school. Common form or individual school's form - they're going to get in. So for those kids I woud definitely say why bother with the individual apps? Use the common one. (By the way, do these kids know how to identify themselves? Probably.) But for the rest of the great unwashed, I think completing the individual school's form wholly and completely with attention to detail (and by that I mean, for instance, not recycling a previously used essay to sort of "fit" the question) is an advantage for kids at the margins, where every single plus helps. So for those applicants, I think their chances DO go up or down based on the application form. Just my opinion. So much is at stake with this choice. I and other parents have been specifically told by adcoms that they PREFERRED their own form, while they would ACCEPT the common form. You were told the contrary, however. Well, not really the contrary. You were not told they PREFERRED the common form, were you?</p>
<p>Having said all that, by the time the schools move completely to the common form or an online form, it will all be moot. Until then, each applicant should proceed with all these discussions in mind and make the best choice for him/herself.</p>