Commonapp

Today we will be introduced to the US counterpart to UCAS. Meet Commonapp! (CA)

For those who wants to study in the US, you will have undoubtedly heard of this name. Yes, you will have to spend the few months before the January deadline dating this website. You will upload your documents, enter your details, describe your extracurricular activities, divulge your SAT scores -  basically telling Commonapp everything they are interested in which they will then relay on to the schools. Yes, Commonapp is the eyes and ears of Big Brother and also an extremely useful portal. Basically they streamlined most of the application into a website which is extremely useful. You can apply to as many universities as you want in Commonapp unlike UCAS which only allows 4-5 unis.

Disclaimer: Not every university uses Commonapp. Only more than 600 of the 4000 plus of the US unis are affliated with Commonapp but that is most of the well known ones. The university of California (UC) system employs an application system of their own, so does the University of Illinois and University of Texas - basically most state universities do not use Commonapp. However, sharp-eyed applicants might also notice that MIT also does not use Commonapp. And the reason is, according to some MIT employee: "There is nothing common about MIT."

Ok, not to digress, let me first identify a few common problems Malaysian applicants might face in Commonapp. First, you must have at least 3 teachers who are willing to stand by as your referee and your counselor. The counselor's job is to provide a background or context to your application. Where does the applicant come from? How is he like in person? What are his ideals? These are the gaps that the counselor is supposed to plug in to further the admission officers' imagination. Besides the main counselor recommendation, most schools require extra recommendation from the teachers, which will add value to the application. Like UCAS, your referee will be given links to upload your recommendations but unlike UCAS, they get to answer a few questions about you (Rate your attitude in class as compared to the other students). This questions were previously unknown to me until my teacher told me about it. And probably unknown to you too until you read this out. More about value and context soon.

More mystery than meets the eye

For most Malaysians who applied after their pre-university studies, you have to explain the gap that you took after SPM. Never ever say that you did nothing but "量地" (Measuring the land area) at home. So for SPM leavers, find a job, invest in your hobby, backpack around Malaysia, whatever it is make sure that you did something to keep yourself busy as you will need to talk something about the gap that you had. For me, I was conscripted into the Malaysian National Service and I wrote about the experience in my essay. Also, for those pre-university students, senior secondary leaving examinations means the A-Levels or equivalent exams that you took. If you are applying after SPM, you need not fill in this part (but still remember to find something useful to do during the holidays).

Next, the "honors" system is also something that we need to leave blank as it is only implemented in the US. It is not the "anugerah-anugerah"(awards) that we receive at school. We also need to publish our SAT scores and IELTS here. Note: Colleges will still want you to submit the SAT score electronically. There is no escaping that (I know some of you will want to know this). However, if you think that you are too poor to pay for the college application fees, you can e-mail your college to check your SAT scores for you. Also, you can ask your counselor to apply for a fee waiver, especially when you're applying to a lot of schools. One college application fee costs about $80 and sending one score via collegeboard is about $10 so this fee waiver will actualy help to cut a lot of your costs.

The activities section, begs the question, what are the actions, that gains admissions? 

Well, the truth is, everyone will be talking about the latest solution that they invented, the villages they adopted in Africa as well as the various academic Olympiads they won. We are talking about global competition here. Hence don't bother mentioning an activity unless it adds value to your essay. By this time, you should be able to grasp the abstract notion of a holistic application. All of the parts add together to build a true and concrete picture of yourself. BS too much in one part, and your application won't glue together. Hence, just write the activities that you think will build a good image of whom you want to portray as. Basically, we need to emphasize quality over quantity - even I didn't use all the 10 slots. Be descriptive as you talk about the activities and refrain from weird acronyms

For the essay in Commonapp, I will be talking about it in later posts but you must know that there exists an extra comment essay where you can continue to write about additional information that you feel might not be covered in your application (surprise!). I strongly discourage applicants to use this part as the admission officers reading your application is already bogged down with so much work that they will barely give it a skim-through. Although most of you have already Googled the prompt for the schools, there are actually additional questions in the college section (more surprises!). These questions are usually under 50 words, hence they don't show up as the college's supplementary essay but still they are important. For my Stanford application, I had to spend more time answering 8 of these short questions. That is something new that you need to know.

Still feeling confused about Commonapp? Any questions. If not, as always I will leave you with a few tips.

TIPS:

1. Start early.

2. Apply for fee waiver.
3. Sign into Commonapp to see for yourself

Have a nice day :)