<p>Two fantastic schools have reported 42% and 20% increases in their second years using the common application. In a year when most schools are static with admission numbers, and the student population didn't increase, this is something worth discussing. </p>
<p>UChicago and Brown are incredible schools and two of the last and most proud holdouts (Brown only until recently was only a paper app school) to join the Common App movement. And they are certainly benefiting from their decision. </p>
<p>But I want to bring up this question. Though of course preferences change from year to year, you are hard pressed to find schools that are as different as UChicago and Brown, and yet I'd assume that they received a lot of common applications (pun-intended) because of their merger.</p>
<p>So speak out- say what you think, praise the common app, decry it. </p>
<p>My perspective: I think that it overvalues universities and makes every person feel they should throw their name in the pot (though i think a whole bunch of other things overvalue unis like 'prestige'). It is like polling - when they ask the question "do you like candidate X" v. "would you vote for candidate X" you get different responses. People like schools, but they can't see themselves making that leap and attending. The commonapp doesn't make you have to feel anything beyond a superficial connection to a school. I think the future of college admissions needs to be seriously reconsidered, and the common app is a temporary solution to a long term problem. </p>
<p>On the one hand the common app gives you the democratizing aspect, it lets everyone choose (and choice is a value and an idea we hold highly in this country), on the other hand it is like derivatives trading, eventually the college market will become so saturated that it will force admission officers to do even more aggressive actions to ensure they are admitting a class that can yield. It is a temporary get-rich solution for colleges, and we the consumers are playing along, not seeing how it damages the system. In a sense, the ballooning of applications makes it harder for people who want to attend a school to be admitted to that school, it makes it harder to stand out. Admissions should change, but probably in a more substantive form than what we have here.</p>