"The Common Application – love it or hate it – is a force in American higher education.
It has been criticized for (allegedly) encouraging colleges to sacrifice an original essay question for one that the Common App would like, and for encouraging more and more students to apply to colleges that they don’t have any intention of going to.
But the Common App also been praised for easing the process for hundreds of thousands of students, and for making it simpler for colleges to attract applicants.
Amid the debate, relatively few studies have been done about what the Common App does. Does it get more applications? Does it cut yield? Does it get more applicants with high SAT scores?" …