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Started in 1975 by 16 private colleges, the Common Application (CA) is a voluntary not-for-profit membership organization that provides a common admissions application that students can submit to any member institution. By allowing students to apply to multiple institutions using the same application (originally submitted on paper, later on floppy disk, and now online), the CA reduces the time students need to spend applying to college and allows them to spend more of it on their schoolwork and other activities during their senior year in high school. Member institutions can allow students to apply using either the CA application or the institution-specific application form, but many now use the CA as their only undergraduate admissions application form, often with the addition of institution-specific questions.
American colleges and universities compete with each other for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff, research funding, and external contributions, as well as on athletic fields. This competition is often alleged to be a zero-sum game; what one institution wins, another must lose. However, as we show here, the CA yields benefits to all participants. It demonstrates how competitors can collaborate to their mutual advantage—in this case, by increasing the quality and quantity of applicants to all the competing institutions.
Joining the Common Application
Originally, CA membership was limited to private colleges and universities that had selective admissions processes. In 2000-2001, having a “holistic” admissions process replaced selectivity as a criterion for membership. A holistic admissions process is defined by the CA as including “subjective as well as objective criteria, including at least one recommendation form, at least one untimed essay, and broader campus diversity considerations.” Data available from the College Board show that in 1985-86, 34.45 percent of all four-year private institutions considered transcripts, recommendations, essays, and racial background in the admissions process. In 2001-2002, public colleges and universities that met the criteria for having holistic admissions criteria were invited to join the CA, and a number are now members.
Ronald Ehrenberg is the director and Albert Liu a graduate research assistant at the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI). This discussion summarizes their research, a more technical description of which is cited in the list of resources. CHERI is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies (USA) Inc., the Alfred Sloan Foundation, and the TIAA-CREF Institute. The authors are grateful to these organizations for their support, but the views expressed here are solely their own.
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