The main application is 5 pages long, with several distinct sections described below.

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PERSONAL, EDUCATIONAL, FAMILY, TESTING INFORMATION

The first 4 pages of the Common Application require information you can usually answer off the top of your head, but you also have to know a few special things.

Your Social Security Number
Your high school’s address and zip code
Your high school's CEEB (College Board) or ACT code and zip code
The month and year you started high school
Your high school counselor’s full name and position, telephone, and fax number
Parent information (degrees, universities attended, dates of attendance, occupation, employer)

HONORS, ACTIVITIES, WORK

As you get started on the Common Application, do your best to remember all your significant achievements and activities. Keep certificates, awards, and other documentation of your accomplishments, both academic and extra-curricular. Ask your parents to help you remember forgotten triumphs!

Academic Honors

In this section, list all significant academic honors and awards beginning with ninth grade. Examples of such honors are: Honor Roll, AP Scholar, National Merit Commended Scholar, High School Scholar-Athlete Award, National Latin Exam Silver Medal, National Honor Society Member, Student Bio-Tech Expo Finalist, Seattle Public Library Writing Contest Winner, National Young Leadership Conference attendee, etc. You may also include your AP grades here.

Write the name of the award, date received, and a brief description if it is not a well-known honor. Do not include honors and awards received prior to 9th grade. If your school does not award any academic honors until late in the senior year, you may say so in this space.

Activities

On the Activities Chart on Page 4, list activities (including summer activities) in order of their depth and importance. Provide details to explain the nature of your participation. Space is limited, so you will have to be careful in your choice of words, and clever in your use of abbreviations.  

Avoid stock descriptions and try for unique phrasing instead. For example, instead of providing a dry label for your position (“hospital volunteer”) tell what you accomplished (“organized hospital Meals-on-Wheels”).

Students often have difficulty estimating the hours per week or weeks per year spent on each activity. Sometimes participation varies a great deal over the course of the year, or an activity is short-lived but very intense. Just do the best you can, and as long as you are honest and do not overstate the total hours of your participation, you will be fine.

Do not worry if you cannot fill all the rows. Colleges would rather see students commit to a few activities in depth than dabble in a bunch of different activities.

As the instructions on the Common Application emphasize, even if you plan to attach a resume, you should fill out the Activities Chart as completely and effectively as you can. If you submit your application online, you will need to mail in your resume. You can also upload it in the Additional Information section of the online Common Application.

Work Experience

This section asks you to list significant jobs in reverse chronological order. Not every student will have an entry for all three rows. Students often have little paid work experience, so do not worry if this section is not very full.

WRITING

Short Answer

The first prompt on the writing page, the Short Answer, asks you to elaborate briefly on one of your activities. You should talk about the the depth and duration of your participation and what you have gained from it. Take advantage of this additional opportunity to showcase excellent writing skills, and present yourself as a real person who is more than a list of activities, a GPA, and some test scores!

The Short Answer is limited to exactly 1000 characters and spaces, or about 150 words. Just make sure that when you print/preview your application, the “Short Answer” fits into the space provided. Make every word count! Do not write a generic description of an activity and lessons learned. This is the first piece of your writing admissions officers will see. Make it interesting and memorable, and as personal and experiential as possible.

The Personal Essay

The online Common Application asks you to write an essay of at least 250 words on one of several topics. Whereas most of the information you supply to colleges is crammed into tables that are too small, entered in tiny boxes one letter at a time, mailed from testing companies, or written by others, the personal statement provides an opportunity to speak with your own voice about something that is important to you. If you apply online, there is no specified word limit, but I would recommend an essay that fits on one page, single-spaced (to conserve paper), Times Roman, size 12 font.  You upload it as a Word document into your online application.

You can start writing your personal statement your junior year. It’s the one part of the application that is the most difficult to do in a hurry, yet it is also the task students are most likely to put off until later. Experience shows that having a good, solid version by the time you finish your junior year makes the application process much easier when fall comes.

Do you have to know what schools you are applying to before you start writing? Not at all, because you will probably use the Common Application to apply to one or more schools, and the Common Application topics are general enough to be used for many non-Common applications as well. The Common Application lists the following 6 choices.

1. Evaluate a significant experience or achievement that has special meaning to you.

2. Discuss an issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.

3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.

4. Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you and explain that influence.

5. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

6. Topic of your choice.

As you can see, these topics are general, and with the inclusion of “Topic of your choice,” virtually any subject you want to write about is fair game. Get online to preview the essay choices on the non-Common applications of specific colleges of interest. You may be surprised to learn how much overlap exists among topics from different colleges.

Some selective colleges pride themselves on their creative and unusual topics, like “How do you feel about Wednesday?” or “If you could balance on a tightrope, over what landscape would you walk?” Thankfully, these are the exceptions.

You will benefit in the long run if you think carefully about the subject of your personal statement before you start writing. It is not unusual for students to throw away their first attempt, but this is more often due to poor writing than to a poor choice of topic.

Additional Information

Sometimes students have to use this to explain a weakness or a problem, but others can use it to present additional personal qualifications or relevant experience. In either case, use the space to create a positive and affirmative case for your readiness for college. This information can be either entered into a sizeable text field, or uploaded as a Word document.   With the Additional Information option, you can:

• explain a blemish in your school record, and what you learned from it (it is best if your account is backed up by the counselor).
• talk about a learning disability that has affected your academic or test performance. Do not send diagnostic test results, but do talk openly about the general nature of your disability and the ways you have learned to succeed in spite of it. (If you can, research or visit the learning support center for the college, and talk about the ways you plan to utilize this important resource.)
• explain unusual circumstances (study abroad or community college during high school), and how they have enhanced your readiness for college.
• talk about a well-defined academic interest and your plan for pursuing it in college.
• write in some depth about an additional activity of importance to you, especially if it relates to planned studies in college.
• upload a resume. This can take the form of a standard academic resume, or a set of thumbnail descriptions of several significant activities, including what you have learned from them.
  

Printable Forms

Information Request Tracker

Application Checklist

Individual College Application Tracker

Essay Checklist

Interview Checklist

Recommendation Checklist

Junior Checklist

Senior Checklist