<p>NMR...I have many reasons for preferring paper applications, but of course online ones work for many.</p>
<p>Also, as far as how many essays, I don't know your D's list of schools but while there is surely essay overlap from school to school, there are many schools with their own essays/apps and many that have supplements with additional essays from both our personal experience and the many applications I have helped many students with. Nobody got by on one essay that I personally know. I believe your D is applying to NYU, yes? That school alone has one main 500 word essay and four short essays. I recall Syracuse, another school I believe your D is interested in based on your posts here, has supplemental essays. Emerson has its own app. And so on. Mapping out all your essay prompts and then slotting in which essays could be used multiple times is surely the way to go but it still means for most students, more than one essay in sum. Everyone's college list differs, as do the requirements.</p>
<p>Thanks, kedstuff. I also work at a college/university and asked about online versus paper, and was told that they are both perfectly valid ways to apply, but that, yes, online is preferred, which is why I am waffling about what D should do. (I feel sure she will want to just do things online and that's that.) :) But your tip to print out and make sure that things are submitted and to follow up is a good one, so thanks for your thoughts and experiences.</p>
<p>soozievt, yes, of course she won't be able to just write one essay, and you are a gazillion percent right in that she is interested in NYU and they do require a lot of writing, and yes, Syracuse does too. (By the way, Emerson is now on the list of schools asking for the Common App, along with a supplement that I cannot seem yet to find online. They give you a prompt and it takes you back to the CA website. Of course, I may be wrong and that kids applying for MT have to write more. I haven't looked into that yet. But Emerson is listed as a Common App-accepting school.) Other schools such as Ithaca and so on <em>require</em> the use of the Common App and their supplements do not ask for additional essays. The bottom line, or so it seems to me, is that it makes sense from a busy student's point of view to use the CA when it is possible, because it clearly will make things easier in some cases, though certainly not all.</p>
<p>Perhaps Emerson changed this year. Last year it wasn't a common app. </p>
<p>Even for those who opt to use common apps and not the school's own app, many of these still have supplements with additional essays. This varies a lot from school to school. I just know that every kid I have worked with, including my own, had a bunch of essays to write, even though certain ones were used many times for various schools' prompts.</p>
<p>Just some thoughts after reading NMR's inquiry and the comments that followed:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>My daughter used the Common App for all schools that would accept it. The reason was two-fold. First, it reduced the number of "main essays" she had to do (although each school's Common App Supp may ask for different supplemental essays, but they are shorter in length and not all schools require them). Second, All the schools want the same basic background info but often in different format if you use the individual school apps. Using the Common App was a tremendous time saver in this regard. Fill it out once and you have it for all schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Like soozievt, we preferred hard copy submissions instead of electronic. The reason was one of control and tracking. We sent the apps in certified mail return receipt requested so that we had proof of delivery and we retained a hard copy of each mailing. It is startling how frequently schools were "missing" items that we knew had been sent and using CMRRR was of great assistance inresolving these issues. What we did was use the online electronic versions of the Common App and School Supps as an "online word processor". Did all the work online, using the electronic forms, and then printed out the completed docs for mailing. </p></li>
<li><p>Importing essays was a copy and past process using Word to do the essays and then copying them into the Common App and Supps. BE SURE TO CHECK FORMATTING in the finished product. It may not "translate" correctly into the electronic document but you will not see it until the document is printed out. Another reason we opted to print the docs and mail hard copies - didn't want to send the Apps and Supps electronically and have the formatting of the essays goofy when the schools printed them out.</p></li>
<li><p>For recommendations, we filled out the Common App form online with all the background info, printed it out and my daughter gave it to her teachers with a request to do the recommendation in any form they wanted (most preferred writing letters to completing the total form) but to attach the form simply for identification purposes.</p></li>
<li><p>Some schools, like Emerson, required electronic submission of all student prepared docs (App, essays, resume, audition scheduling). I don't know whether Emerson has changed it's policy.</p></li>
<li><p>As has been repeated by many, 2 weeks after a doc is sent to a school, call and confirm receipt. Some schools send out written confirmation that the App has been received, some send written notice of items missing, some have webpages where a student can track what the school has a record of receiving. The are lag times with all of this though, and the last thing anyone wants is to run afoul of a deadline. In my daughter's experience, we had some schools swear they did not receive the Common App Supp even though it was mailed in the same envelop as the Common App and the App was received "of record", some didn't receive teacher recs mailed on the same day by the teacher to all schools and received by the others, some didn't receive transcripts. One admissions office didn't receive a summer college transcript from its own registrars office 2 blocks away - it got "lost in the mail"!</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Thanks so much, MichaelNKat! You were very helpful. I too, prefer having a hard copy in my hand to send so that I know that I didn't push some weird button and screw up the formatting. Just so I hear you, you actually completed everything on line and then printed it out? I tried printing out an application and somehow it printed differently than what I was looking at on the screen. Is that not the case with the common app?</p>
<p>Thanks, MichaelNKat! Your approach makes sense to me, especially using Common App for those schools which accept it and then printing them out and sending in hard copies. I like that. It seems like the best of both worlds. I appreciate your taking the time to answer all of my questions and give us the benefit of your very successful approach!</p>
<p>Alliesmom - Yup, did the Common App and individual school supplements online, including "copy and paste" of essays from Word into the App/Supp. You must make sure to "save" all of your changes/additions first and then can hit a preview/print button that will give you a pdf document which you then print (at least that's the sequence I recall). Just make sure you never hit the "send" button. When you print out the docs, you are then able to see where the formatting didn't translate accurately and can go back into the app/supp to make adjustments. The typical problems I encountered involved failures to pick up skipped lines (hitting the "enter" key in Word to skip a line) and paragraph indenting. Also, when you print from a pdf screen, you must use the print button in the pdf program and not the print button in your browser.</p>