<p>Hello everyone. I am a US permanent resident living in Bangladesh and I will apply to 12 universities in USA for the fall 14 session. I am planning to apply EA to two of the universities and this is where I'm facing a problem. The deadline for submitting my application is Nov 1 for the EA universities. Since there isn't much time for me to complete my application within this deadline I'll have to do everything in a rush for which I really don't expect my commonapp essay to be very good or creative. So, I was thinking about editing my essay and writing a better one when I later apply RD to the other colleges. However, I'm not really sure if the commonapp actually allows people to do this. Although it is stated in their website that a second version of the essay can be created, it is also mentioned that this should be done with the purpose of correcting any minor errors and not with the purpose of changing the entire content of the essay. But will it really be a big deal if I update my entire essay for the RD universities? In addition, the supplemental essays of some universities match with my essay topic for the commonapp. So, it would be really great to have an alternate version of my commonapp essay anyway.</p>
<p>On a different note, I have applied for some jobs and internships and might not get their acceptance notifications until late october for which I won't be able to add them to my commonapp for the EA universities. But I would really love to add them later when I apply RD to the other universities. Will I able to edit my activities section of the commonapp then or am I not allowed to do so?</p>
<p>I would really appreciate it if you guys help me out as I'm in a really confused state right now and I don't even have much time remaining until the EA deadline.</p>
<p>You should be just fine proceeding with your plan to revise both the activities and the essay after initially submitting an EA version. You are allowed unlimited edits between submissions to all parts of the app other than the essay. Once you submit a 3rd version of the essay, that version will be locked and no further edits allowed.</p>
<p>After you submit any CommonApp, your essay is locked. You may then unlock it and edit it many times until you submit to other schools again. You are allowed to unlock it twice so you can have 3 submitted revisions. Then it is permanently locked. That is my understanding and my D just unlocked it once and is working on the second revision right now. The rest of the application you can edit as many time as you want before submitting each application.</p>
<p>Oh, there’s something I forgot to ask. Do the alternate versions of the commonapp essay necessarily have to be on the same topic as the original/first version? Won’t I be able to write them on different topics?</p>
<p>The revisions are intended for making corrections. It is not even recommended to tailor each revision for a specific school according to CA. Nevertheless, would it be a waste of time to pick another topic and write another essay unnecessarily?</p>
<p>As I understand, an applicant may unlock and modify/edit their common-app essay up to a limit of three times (after the initial submission to a school); however is it possible to change the essay prompt that you are answering to another prompt?</p>