Recommendation options on common application

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

For next fall:
How does the common application work? Can it be varied for each college?

  1. Let’s say you are most excited to submit recommendations from a Spanish and an English teacher, but one of your colleges requires one recommendation from English/S.S. and one from Math/Sci. Can you submit English and Math to that college, and English and Spanish to your other colleges? Or does the same application go to all the schools, except for the supplemental essays?
  1. Similarly, could you answer other questions differently for different colleges (Short answer q'S, obviously, not cut and dry factual q's)?
2

@TheGreyKing - CA has a limit on how many teachers and how many others you can store. I think it is 3 teachers and 2 others. Each college has its own limits on required and optional. Depending on the college’s requirement - you choose from the 5 you already have.

The main CA essay is common for all applications, but technically - you can change before each application. All others are in the supplemental for each college and you will need to type (or copy paste) to each one.

3

Thank you.

4

First of all, it is WAY too early for you to being thinking about next fall! Technically it’s still THIS fall right now…

That being said - The above information is also incorrect ^^ Common App itself does not limit how many recommenders you can store, the colleges do. More on that later. To answer your questions:

Common App is literally what the name suggests. There is one common application where you fill out all your info that will be sent to your colleges, so you don’t have to type it out each time. This includes Profile (name, address, contact, legal ish), Activities (ur extracurricular act’s), Academic info (gpa, classes), Honors, and your “personal essay”, etc. Theoretically, you fill this out once and finish it, and then the same thing is sent to each college once you submit it.

Loophole: Let’s say you’re applying to colleges A, B, and C. Once you submit the Common App to college A, you can update the info in the CA. This updated info will only be available for colleges B and C. Because you have already submitted the application for A, they will not get the updates. Why is this useful (and slightly crazy)? If college A places more emphasis on extracurriculars, you can make your app seem more extracurricular-y. Then once you’ve submitted that, you can make your common app seem more academic for colleges B and C. (or vice versa)

I guarantee you though, you won’t have time for all that ^^, but to answer your question, yes, it can be varied for each college.

NOW, that’s only the common application part of Common App. In order to submit your application, you will have to add schools to your “My Colleges list.” Then you go to that individual school’s part of the CA, and answer their questions (like major, school, RD vs ED, etc) and complete any writing supplements you may have for that school.Both the school’s profile and your common app will be submitted together. It’s all really intuitive as you’ll see next year.

Okay, so recommenders. First, you have to INVITE a recommender. Once you open any school’s individual profile, you can INVITE recommenders to common app itself. Just enter name and email address to INVITE them. There is NO limit on how many recommenders you INVITE to common app (the whole storing 5 thing recommenders is false.) However, those recommenders will not get an email until you ASSIGN them to a college. ASSIGNING to a college means you want to send that teacher’s recommendation to that college. FYI, recommenders can see what colleges you have assigned them to (obviously), but they cannot see all your colleges (ie any of the ones that you didn’t assign them to). SO YES, you can submit English/math to one college and English/spanish to other colleges. Super easy.

Each school has different requirements as well; some colleges allow up to 10 teachers, some cut it off at one.

Already answered above.

Some general tips for common app:

  1. INVITE YOUR RECOMMENDERS EARLY!!! Teachers often take a while to complete the recommendation for you and you DO NOT want to be the student waiting on october 31st for teachers to submit your rec’s when you have a nov 1 st deadline !! (true story)
  1. OKAY, so. A little hint: when you invite a recommender/teacher, teachers will see when your first deadline is so they know when it has to be done by. Because of the sheer number of rec's they have to do, teachers will often do those students who have really early deadlines first and those who have later deadlines afterwards. My tip: Add a school to your common app that has a really early deadline, like oct 15 or something (even if you're not applying). Teachers will see that you have that early deadline and they will finish your rec earlier. Then, october 14th you can delete that school, BUT the recommendation that the teacher uploaded will still be there for all your other schools! Done early and no stressing.

Hope this helps! Go enjoy junior year !! Worry about SATs yo

5

Thanks!