Does 'Preview' accurately show the pages that colleges will see?

…or will the information be rendered into the ‘pretty’ five-pager PDF that Common App makes available to those who want to fill out in paper form.

In 2012, when I helped my son process his apps, doing a preview would actually do exactly that. It force-fitted everything into a rigidly designed form. Now I am helping his younger sister with the same thing, and I see that the preview command is different. It treats things more like a doc or web page, in that text is not trimmed to fit the space but rather will just expand to allow for different page breaks.

Does anyone know exactly what goes to the colleges? Is it the doc style with variable page breaks and open-ended space for content. Or is it the rigid five-page PDF?