<p>Why do all the colleges feel the need for a supplement? Someone once said to me that it was becuase there is not limit on the number of colleges you can apply to in the US, the common app would make it easy to apply to as many as you want, with no extra effort, hence making admissions even more competitive and difficult for the adcoms. Therefore, supplements were introduced to prevent this.
In the UK, we have a central admissions service where your whole application is basically sent off to your six chosen colleges on 2 sides of A4 (they only put on it the info the colleges need for the decisions). This makes applying to college much less stressful, and admissions people in the UK do not complain that they do not have enough info to assess the candidate with. Are people in the US positively against a central admissions service where people are limited to say, 8 colleges?</p>