“Overall, it’s just very slick,” explains Post High School Counselor Linda Connelly, describing the brand new Common Application. So far, CA4 as it’s known, is a success for the Common App Association.

According to The Common Application website, the association was launched in 1975 by private colleges that wished to provide a common, standardized first-year application form for students.

Since then, it has grown to include 517 private and public colleges, reaching over one million students. Their goal is to provide reliable services that promote equity, access, and integrity in the college application process.

The main change the Common App made in their new version is making the site a “smart” application. “This means that when you respond to a question, it either takes you down one path or it takes you down another,” Connelly explained, “they’re requesting less information on each screen so it’s easy to whip through and fill out the information.” This is a significant improvement on the old site, which would present most questions in a seemingly endless list.

Many students have had positive reactions to the new Common App. Senior Heather Gerth found the application process to be “very easy and user friendly” and was happy to find that most of the colleges she was applying to were on a part of the Application. Similarly, senior Taylor Brown found that the application was easy to fill out; “there were some questions that were a bit tough, but I got everything checked over by my college counselor once I was finished,” explained Brown.

Over the summer, New Trier offered classes on filling out the Common App and writing the essay that goes along with it. The post high school counselors are also more than willing to go through the application with their students to make sure they have filled out all the information correctly.

One problem many New Trier students run into is that not many of their schools are a part of the Common Application, such as the University of Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin or Iowa. “Well, for example Wisconsin has a network of public schools within the state and they have their own application; they’re reluctant to join just because they have something in place,” explains Connelly, “Same with Iowa; they like what they have.”

There is also a process for schools to join the Association: they have to agree to meet the rules of The Common Application, and pay a certain amount of the application fee to the association, making it expensive for schools to join. Regardless, roughly twenty schools join each year; this year 32 new schools were added. Many students were happy to see schools like the University of Colorado at Boulder and Purdue University added to the list.

Another major change to the Common App are the essays. “The common app questions were the same for many years,” explained Connelly, “this is the first time I think they have changed the questions since the early nineties. One popular question they got rid of was the open-ended prompt that allowed students to pick a topic of their choice.”  According to Connelly, many admissions officers felt as though the students answering the open-ended question more often than not responded better to another prompt. She also speculates that they changed the questions to “make them a little more relevant to the people applying” with questions about the importance of diversity and asking people to share their backgrounds.

The new application also changed the way recommenders and college counselors can access a particular student’s Common Application profile, making it much easier for teachers to submit their recommendations. Students no longer have to send over millions of pre-addressed envelopes to their teachers, as there is a simple way to submit them online.

Thus far, the new version hasn’t run into many problems. Uploading various documents and responses can take a little bit longer, and there are some glitches in editing typos within words. Otherwise, Connelly believes that the CA4 is a great improvement on the previous version and has made the notoriously stressful process a little easier. “I would love to see more colleges on the Common App,” said Brown. “It saves me time, and it’s reliable.”