<p>If I am applying for regular decision, does it matter when the colleges receive my application? I mean they don't start looking at applications until after the deadline right? So it doesn't matter if I submitted my applications on November 15 or December 15 right?</p>
<p>PS: i haven't even started on my rec letters or essays...:)</p>
<p>It is not supposed to matter except for schools with rolling admissions.</p>
<p>If the actual deadline is Dec. 15 and Jan. 15, I would get them in by the 14th. For some reason I think the wording is “…before(or by) Dec. 15”. I’m not sure. My D applied to two schools early action a couple of years ago. The deadline was Nov. 1. She submitted the common app on Oct. 31 and got accepted to both. Good luck!</p>
<p>Try not to wait until the last day. When tens of thousands of students are trying to submit apps at the same time, the Common App website slows to a crawl. It can take 20 minutes to load a page. And if you run into some kind of snafu–a power failure, for example–you can find your self in trouble.</p>