www.commonapp.org
The Common Application is used by over 300 institutions for freshman and transfer students. The Common App requires one essay, but many schools will have supplemental questions and essays that you can access through the Common App website.


2009/2010 Essay Questions:
(250 words minimum) Topic of your choice or on one of the options listed below.
1. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
2. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
4. Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
5. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
6. Topic of your choice.

Short Answer:
Please elaborate on one of your activities (extracurricular, personal activities, or work experience)(150 words or fewer).

Passport's Take:

• Try to keep the essay between 500 and 750 words.
• It is best to avoid writing about a person who has had an influence on you (#3) because it often becomes an essay about that person, and not about you.
• Use a personal story to highlight qualities that make you special and attractive to a college.

School Forms:
There are a number of school forms that are required to be submitted with your application. Some of your teachers and counselors may choose to complete the forms online. For those who choose to complete the forms on paper, you should print the appropriate PDF forms, fill in the application information area, and provide them to your college official and instructor(s). They may complete the form once, copy, and submit to one or more member institutions. If you print these forms after you have completed the Demographics and Applicant sections of the Common Application, some of the applicant information will be printed on these forms for you. More information about the school forms process is located in the ‘School Forms’ section of the Common App Online.

The teacher and counselor recommendation process is to be completed either all online or all offline. The college admissions offices do not want to receive the forms online and then receive paper evaluations and transcripts on paper. If there is a part of the online process that the counselor or teacher is unable to complete, the only choice is to opt out and do the form on paper.
Most institutions require multiple Instructor Evaluations. To determine how many are required for your selected institutions, please contact the institution directly or review their requirements.

Make sure your secondary school counselor includes your high secondary profile and official transcript with their completed Secondary School Report.

Submitting:
You must submit the Common App to each of your selected institutions. This can be done all at one time, or one at a time. After you have submitted your Common App, you may add additional institutions and submit your application to them, as well.

Once you submit an application to an institution, you will no longer be able to change the information submitted to that institution. It is possible to create an alternate version of your application and change the information in that application before re-submitting it to other institutions, but there is no need to do so unless you need to correct an error. In general, the Common Application is designed to be completed once and submitted to all a student’s colleges at once or over a period of time.

Questions and Comments:
Post your questions about the common application here or on Admitipedia's Discussion Pages, and we can all try to find answers on the web (or from previous experience).

In the meantime, here's the link to CommonApp's knowledge base:

http://s3.parature.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=5524