<p>I know the common app came at August 1st this year, so I was planning on applying to all my colleges in late August so that I don't have to worry about doing it when school starts. Is this allowed? Will it better my chances?</p>
<p>Common app is released in august 8, but it takes about one month for most schools to upload their supplemental questions / essays.
with the exception of Uchicago or USC most supplemental essays are the same (write about extracurricular, why our school, what will you do at our school, …) so you can prepare them before august too</p>
<p>At schools with rolling admissions it can be a boost to your chances to apply early. Some schools within public unis fill most of their slots in August and September. At some schools recruited athletes are encouraged to submit early. </p>
<p>Other than those specific situations, there is no benefit to applying early and in my opinion it is better to wait until closer to the deadline to actually submit. At schools without rolling admissions, adcoms generally don’t begin reading applications until within a week or so of the submission deadline and they don’t pay attention to the date applications were submitted.</p>
<p>You may receive additional honors or awards during fall semester that you want to highlight in your app. And, you may develop new perspectives that help you write better essays.</p>
<p>I don’t advocate procrastinating, though. Getting started on your apps in August is a great plan. Begin work on the essays, start filling in the Activities and Honors section. But, if you let your draft application sit a few weeks and re-visit it before submitting, you’ll have fresh eyes and be able to make improvements. </p>
<p>Your counselor and teachers will also have to submit their recommendations before your apps are complete. Many times those can’t be accomplished in August, so even if you are ahead of the game your app can’t be considered until those other parts are done.</p>
<p>Generally, I recommend sending in a few applications early in the season to rolling or early action/early decision schools and waiting until later in fall to finalize RD applications.</p>
<p>Okay thanks for the information everyone. Does anyone happen to know if you can have teacher’s send recommendations before the common app comes out? (If I create an account?) I’m having my junior year teacher’s do them and want them to not forget all my class participation over summer? And also everyone asks for them in the beginning of senior year and I want to send in my app as soon as everything’s done?</p>
<p>You can have your application filled and essays written in August and don’t worry about it when school starts. You just need to submit the application before deadline. Most likely, your school would not send counselor recommendation and school report until school resumed anyway.</p>
<p>You can’t create an account for next year’s apps until after this year’s accounts are wiped out in July and the common app re-opens in August. Any work you do before the next application season will be lost, as will any recs submitted by teachers you invite. It’s just not a good idea to get recs junior year. At a minimum, your teachers are going to want to wait until your final exams are graded so they know how you did in their courses.</p>