A Common App for Scholarships: Not So Common

College applications are so predictable across the board that long ago, The Common Application was created. The Common App (as it’s commonly known) offers students a one-size-fits-all application that asks for academic achievements, SAT/ACT test scores, an essay, recommendation letters, basic demographic information, completed courses, declaration of major… the basic things most schools want to know. It’s accepted by more than 400 schools and was used by more than 2 million applicants as of 2010 in an effort to prevent the repetition of submitting the same info over and over again to an array of schools. Each school may require some extra stuff (e.g. an essay about why you want to come to their campus, specifically), because they need some sort of litmus test for how strongly students feel about their institution. As “how do I get in?” quickly turns into “how will I pay for it?” come spring semester, another question arises: Why doesn’t [...]