Every year, I look forward to this counselor webinar, especially because I want to identify any changes to the writing portions of the Common App so my students can start early. Here are the writing headlines this year for the Class of 2025:
- Main Essay – No change to Common App prompts from last year! See those prompts and my tips for how to tackle here.
- Activity List – No changes. You’ll still have a really tight space to explain a lot, so your characters count! Position/leadership (50); Organization (100); Description (150). Looking for inspiration on your activity list? Check out my “Pandemic Pivots Panel” where students got creative during a really tough time. Maybe this will spark YOUR ideas?
- Community Disruption/COVID-19 Question – Returning again. Only answer if you have something critical to share. Two cycles ago, only 16% of the students answered this question. I didn’t hear new data yet but suspect it’s similar.
- Additional Info – Same story here – up to 650 words. Optional – only if you need it for context.
What else do you need to know?
- Account Rollover – The Common App will go offline on July 28 and reload for the Class of 2025 on August 1. IF you start your Common App account BEFORE 8/1, here’s what will and won’t roll over:
More interesting updates:
- More schools have joined the Common App! Currently, there are 1,074 member institutions, and approximately half don’t charge any application fee.
- The number of applications continues to increase: 1.4 million unique first-year applicants (+7% vs year ago) submitted 9.4 million first-year apps (+11% vs year ago)
- College Profile Page – upgrades coming, especially making deadlines more clear.
- SCOTUS Impact – After the Supreme Court’s decision to disallow the consideration of race in admissions, the Common App still asks students to report this information for data/statistics purposes to achieve its “moonshot goal” of equity in college admissions. They told us that this information is “suppressed,” so colleges don’t see it.
- Direct Admissions will continue, and some offers will be made inside the Common App! This includes proactive admission offers from partnering member institutions to first-generation and low/middle-income students. We hope to see more info on this in the coming months.
- Financial Aid Tab – Look for improvements, including more in-app scholarship matching and prioritizing calls to action.
- Fraud Policy Update – The Common App is continuing to ask students to affirm that all writing is their own (no AI please!) and will be looking to detect fraud in applications in general. See below for more info:
That’s all for now! I’ll close with my favorite question…What’s your story?
