The Common App is a valuable application tool but there's a lot to it – find out how to use it, key deadlines, essay prompts and more in our guide here.

The Common App is expanding its direct admissions program for the 2024–2025 application season to 116 member colleges and universities in 34 states. Newsletters Games Share a News Tip.

The Common Application has long been used primarily by teenagers planning to enroll in college full time right after high school. But soon the online platform will evolve, its leaders say, to ...

The Common Application, a nonprofit organization that runs an online admissions platform used by more than 800 institutions, wants to help more students get to college. To that end, the group said ...

Two lawyers argue that if the Common Application no longer requires students to disclose criminal history, it should not ask them about whether they have been disciplined by universities.

"That's what the narrative is, but it's not true," Rickard said. About 90% of the more than 1,000 schools that use the Common App each year accept more than half of its applicants.

Vanderbilt Hall on the Yale University campus in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 12, 2015. Yale requires several more essays in addition to the Common App. Bloomberg via Getty Images / Updated.

Today, the Common Application opens for the 2024–25 application cycle. As students begin brainstorming essays, here are the key points to consider for each prompt.

If requested, the Common App will conceal basic information on race and ethnicity — a move that could help schools if the Supreme Court ends affirmative action.