Author: Ken Anselment

To college counselors and teachers endorsing Lawrence applicants

We appreciate the hard work the folks at the Common Application have been doing over the past few months as they continue to perfect Common App 4. We eagerly await the day—and we believe it’s coming soon—when its function matches its beautiful form.

But we know everything isn’t perfect yet, especially when it comes to those things that are—as our friend, Patrick O’Connor, associate dean for college counseling at Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School (Mich.) calls them—the “grown up” pieces of the application: the school report, transcript, teacher recommendation, etc. (Those things that grown-ups submit to support students’ applications.)

That’s why today we have launched two special portals at Lawrence—one for college counselors and one for teachers—to use as a back-up plan in case they run into snags submitting materials through the Common Application for their students who are applying to Lawrence.

Counselors and teachers, we urge you to give the Common Application the “old college try” first. If that proves not to work, then go ahead and use the Lawrence University portals.

Now might be a good time to remind everyone that the Lawrence University community abides by an honor code* and, therefore, trusts that the only people using these portals will be those for whom it is intended (i.e., college counselors and teachers).

*No Lawrence student will unfairly advance his or her own academic performance or in any way limit or impede the academic pursuits of other students of the Lawrence community.

Common App concerns, 11/7 update

We continue to monitor the Common Application daily… and by “daily” we mean pretty much “hourly”.

We are under the impression that snags with the Common Application are diminishing. Last Thursday, October 31, was the next big test for the Common Application, as it was the day before the November 1 deadline for many colleges around the country. (That it would fall on Halloween seemed portentous.) That day, and the days that followed it, did not see a repeat of October 14, where many users were not able to log into their accounts.

This does not mean, however, that everything is now perfect with the Common Application, which is why we continue to post solutions for those of you who may run  into issues trying to submit your Common Application. Here are a couple directly from the Common Application we have had up for a little while now, followed by a suggestion to use the Common Application Knowledge Base:

Error Page upon Submission. On occasion, an applicant may see an error page upon submission. If this happens, the applicant should:

  1. log out of his or her account
  2. log back in
  3. go the Dashboard. The Dashboard should display confirmation that the application was submitted despite the error message observed during the submission process. The problem is with the page redirect, not the actual submission. We are working to fix this issue.

Unable to Create Account. There are some cases where recommenders are not able to create an account after clicking the “here” link within the recommender email invitation. If you encounter this issue, please contact the Help Center at recsupport.commonapp.org so that the support team can resolve this for you.

Knowledge base. If you encounter other head-scratchers while working on your Common Application, try checking the Common App Knowledge Base for tips. It is a searchable, rapid-response form that may offer you some solutions to problems.

Remember, if you’re having problems with the application itself, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor so we can (a) be aware of the problem and (b) make any necessary accommodations.

Our Early Action deadline is November 15.

(Our “hourly” monitoring of the Common App will occur with greater frequency as that date gets nearer.)

In the meantime, as Garrison Keillor says when he signs off on the Writer’s Almanac, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

Common App concerns, 10/29 update

We are under the impression that things are getting better with the Common Application with every passing day. According to Scott Anderson, Common App’s senior communication guy, the Common App had processed 350,000 applications, an increase of 28% over last year at this time. More important, he says that “while submission volume is growing daily, we have seen no recurrence of what  happened on October 14, the day many users were unable to log in to their accounts.”

If, however, you are one of the folks running into issues trying to submit your Common Application, here—directly from the Common App—are a couple of common problems and fixes:

Error Page upon Submission. On occasion, an applicant may see an error page upon submission. If this happens, the applicant should:

  1. log out of his or her account
  2. log back in
  3. go the Dashboard. The Dashboard should display confirmation that the application was submitted despite the error message observed during the submission process. The problem is with the page redirect, not the actual submission. We are working to fix this issue.

Unable to Create Account. There are some cases where recommenders are not able to create an account after clicking the “here” link within the recommender email invitation. If you encounter this issue, please contact the Help Center at recsupport.commonapp.org so that the support team can resolve this for you.

Remember, if you’re having problems with the application itself, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor so we can (a) be aware of the problem and (b) make any necessary accommodations.

Common App concerns, 10/21 update

Last week was a rough week for many people touched by the Common Application:

  • students trying to apply with the Common Application (however, not all students are encountering problems, which is either weird, or a sign of hope that things are getting better, albeit incrementally);
  • teachers and counselors trying to submit recommendations for those students (same thing; the problems are not universal);
  • parents trying to comfort their kids as they struggled through completion;
  • the 500+ Common App colleges who are themselves struggling to help these groups navigate a stressful college application process that has been exacerbated by the Common App’s mechanical issues.

All of this might explain the message that I and my other Common Application college admission colleagues received Friday night from the Common Application’s director of communications acknowledging the poor quality of their communications about the issues plaguing Common App users. The director promised that, from that point forward, they would do a better job communicating about Common App issues (along with the better job they promise to be doing fixing the issues with the Common Application).

True to their word, Monday morning brought some updates from the Common Application. I’ll share below the ones that are relevant for students, parents, teachers, and counselors.

October 21, 2013

As promised, we are sending daily updates regarding system performance and support. We will continue this communication as long as there is news to share.

Parchment. Parchment informed us this weekend that it had completed the work necessary for its counselors to be able to submit transcripts to our system.

Preview PDF Progress. Last night we released a fix to address the problem that has been preventing some applicants from seeing the Preview PDF during the application submission process. As with all new releases, we will monitor this one closely over the next several hours to ensure that it is working as intended.

Help Center Interruption. On Saturday night, the Help Center was unavailable for approximately 3 hours due to a service interruption at the third-party vendor that operates our support software. The vendor worked quickly to identify and resolve the problem, and they join us in apologizing to users who were impacted by this delay. The vendor has taken extra precautions to avoid any future interruption in service.

Editing/Saving Errors. On Saturday night and again on Sunday morning, some students encountered errors when trying to edit and save their applications. None of our internal monitoring indicated a problem, which suggests the issue was isolated to a particular server or part of the system. That would explain why most users did not encounter any difficulty. In all, we received about 100 support tickets on the topic.

I will share relevant updates with you as I receive them from the Common Application, along with any news from our end, as well. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow @CommonApp and get the same updates directly.

Again, if you are a Lawrence applicant encountering problems with your Common App, please connect with your Lawrence admissions counselor directly.

Thank you for your patience.

Common Application concerns?

Lawrence University is a Common Application user.
At least for now, the Common Application is the only way to apply to Lawrence University.

The roll-out of the new Common Application has been bumpy and buggy. Despite that fact, and all the frustrations people have been experiencing with the Common Application, I offer this piece of advice from my friendly neighborhood yoga instructor:

Take a deep breath. Hold it. Lower your shoulders. Exhale.

Your application to Lawrence will be OK. Here’s why.

Time is still on your (and our) side. We are, at the time of this post, just a little more than two weeks from our Early Decision deadline (November 1), and a little less than one month from our Early Action deadline (November 15).

If you (or we) find that problems start arising leading up to those deadlines, please know that we will be flexible. If you know anything about Lawrence, you know that we take a student-centered approach to our work with you.

If you have applied, we have your application. If you have submitted yours and wonder if we have it, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor.

If you are having issues with your application, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor.

We are considering alternatives to the Common Application, in the event that problems persist.

Watch this space for updates as they happen.

Ken Anselment
Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid