Early results from the Common Application

Now that dust is settling on a somewhat chaotic application season, folks at the Common App have begun crunching numbers to get more focus on the 754,545 “unique” applicants who registered with the system and submitted applications to 517 member institutions this year.

And some interesting “submission trends” between August 2013 and February 2014 have begun to emerge, including that glitches in the system appeared to have little or no impact on the quantity of applications submitted.  

In fact, the Common App has already seen a 13 percent increase over the number of applications received this time last year.

While final results won’t be available for a few more months, here are preliminary results from data received to-date by the Common Application:

• 3.3 million applications were submitted through the Common App by February 2014
• Individual applicants submitted an average of 4.4 applications each
• 28.6% of the students submitting applications were first generation—neither parent with a 4-year degree
• 55% of the applicants were female and 45% male
• Over 9% were international and represented 203 countries, with China sending the most applications (36.1%) followed by India (6%) and Canada (4.5%)
• Most applicants (72.9%) were enrolled in public schools, while less than 1% were homeschooled
• Of the 91.5% of applicants who answered questions about race, 67.3% were white, 17.6% were Asian, and 9.7% were Black
• A grand total of 1,763,180 Writing Supplements were submitted through this new component of the Common App
• 12,161,337 recommendation forms have been submitted through the system—so far
• December 31, 2013 was the single busiest day in Common App history with 412,265 individual logins and 154,903 applications submitted—the Common App received 5.2 forms per second before the clock struck midnight

As the Common App continues to get its house in order for the new year, about 30 colleges were approved by the Board for addition to the roster of member institutions (contracts are being negotiated and names haven’t been released yet).  Presumably a permanent executive director will be announced shortly, and plans are going forward to bring all technical functions in-house.

In the meantime, seniors are mulling over responses from what has been a strange year, counselors are readying final reports, colleges are deciding what their future relationship will be with the Common App, and the process is getting set to start all over again on August 1.