Question about Common Application

[Hilary]

My son is working on his now, and listed me as the "school counselor" along with my email address. I haven't gotten an email back from the CA people inviting me to the "school website." If anyone's done this already, how long did it take to hear back from CA? Ditto with the teachers who are invited to submit recommendations ... did they get emails quickly? I'm wondering if we did something wrong. (And, yes, I've checked my spam folder.)

[Brenda in MA]

I just came to the board to post this exact question. My son put in my name and email as his school counselor about a week ago, and I haven't received anything from the Common Application either.

Anyone here successfully used the Common Ap before?

TIA,
Brenda

[Hilary]

Brenda, I can't believe you've waited a week! I thought we'd hear back right away. There's a woman at a Yahoo group I belong to who posted a month or so ago about doing the CA and everything had worked for her. I've just emailed her to ask her how long it took to hear back and I'll let you know what she says.

[Gwen in VA]

You folks are the guinea pigs -- last year the Common App didn't have online forms for teachers and guidance counselors.

I am SO glad that you folks get to figure out the online system and then give feedback to the Common App folks before I have to deal with it! :D

Seriously, I absolutely detest all the online stuff. Dd1 applied to one college that only had an online student form but didn't have a checkbox for "homeschool" or even a checkbox for "other". The form wouldn't let her NOT check a box, so she called and asked what she should do. She ended up needing to check "international student"!!!!!

You have my best wishes as you navigate these strange waters!

[Hilary]

Well, I heard back from the gal at my Yahoo Group and she said she heard back from the CA people "within hours." Sounds like something's screwed up. And I haven't heard back from my inquiry that I sent to the CA website. Guess it's time for this wheel to squeak some more!

Gwen, I *thought* doing the whole application online would be so much easier :banghead:

[Brenda in MA]

I'll let you know if I hear anything back from CA.

Brenda

[Brenda in MA]

saying that some emails get caught by network firewalls and cannot get through. They suggested that I sign up for a free email account with google or yahoo and try that email address. I'll be trying this later when my son get home and will report back if it works.

HTH,
Brenda

[Brenda in MA]

I asked them how my son changes the counselor info, and their reply is below. I will probably go ahead with the new email addy, but I don't think there really were problems with me getting email from them because I was able to converse with their tech support people using my original email addy with no problems.

I also thought going wholly electronic would be easier, but now I'll be constantly worried that my messages/submissions didn't go through. Ugh....

HTH,
Brenda

Reply from Common Ap:

Yes, if adding our @commonapp.com domain to your safelist still doesn't allow you to get emails from us, then the best way to continue is to use a different email address. Now students can't change the email addresses of officials once they invite them, but they can delete them. Have your student delete your invite request from their invite list and then begin a new invite, this time with a different email address. You will receive an email that will contain instructions and log in information for entering our online forms section.

Thank you for contacting technical support.

Regards,
Common App Support Team

[Hilary]

Hi Brenda,
I got the same information. I agree that it seems strange that their tech support emails would go through fine, but not the other. Do you have AOL? I'm blaming that. It makes me laugh that AOL lets in a ton of spam every day ... not to my spam folder, but right in to my regular mailbox ... but it bumps out the Common Application. Maybe somewhere among the spam for pet toenail clippers and "enhancing" drugs, there'll be an invitation to submit college information! Meanwhile, I switched to another email server.

[Brenda in MA]

No, we don't use AOL. I have a comcast email address, and I've never, never had any problems getting email from anyone. They do have a spam filter, which is pretty good, but I've never missed a message from someone who said they sent one.

I think the problem must be on their end. I will sign up for another email (which I don't really want to do), and try that. Let me know if you have good luck with your alternate email.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one to be having troubles with this.
Brenda

[Hilary]

Hey, Brenda, I got the email from CA within an hour of submitting a new email address. Hope you do too!

[Brenda in MA]

I just got my email from them as well. When I logged onto the form, it asked for my "position". I'm not sure what to put there. Homeschool parent? Guidance Counselor? Do you have any good ideas for "position"?

Brenda

[Hilary]

I think I will probably put Homeschool Parent.

[Brenda in MA]

I think I will probably put Homeschool Parent.

That's what I settled on, too.

Brenda

[Gwen in VA]

I wanted SO badly to put "Grand Poobah" (The Mikado)......

But I thought better of it and ended up putting "mother." (I wanted to then add taxi-driver, psychiatrist, coach, mentor, librarian, tutor, teacher, cook, cleaning lady, gardener, coach, nurse, disciplinarian, advisor, guidance counselor, ......... -- mother seems so insufficient!)

I love my job -- it's never ever boring! :001_smile:

[Kareni]

I wanted SO badly to put "Grand Poobah" (The Mikado)......

Hmm, I like this. If I were to be accurate, I might have to put Sergeant-Major or Dictator or Whip Cracker. One could have fun with this!

Regards,
Kareni

[Nan in Mass]

Personally, I think mother says it all LOL. What don't we do?

[Brenda in MA]

My son and I have spent the last couple of weeks working on his applications. A couple of his schools only take the Common Ap, so that is what we've been working with.

The Common Ap is completed on-line, and from what I gather, this is the first year where your letters of recommendation can come on-line, too. We've had some issues that were discussed in previous posts while working with the Common Ap, and I now have some more experiences to share.

As a homeschooler, I, mom, am the guidance counselor. When the student completes his portion of the form, he is supposed to list his counselor and their email address. The Common Ap system is supposed to send the counselor an email with a user ID so you can fill in the "school forms".

After a few tries, we finally got this to work, and I did receive an email from them. I had to sign-up for a free gmail account, because for some reason, my comcast email address would not receive the counselor email (despite my being able to converse with their support people about this problem through my comcast email addy).

The student can also list the people that will provide their recommendation letters, and the Common Ap is supposed to email these people with a user ID so they can submit their letter on-line. My son has listed two people, and one of them received the email from Common Ap with no trouble, but the second one (who has a comcast and a verizon email addy) has not received the Common Aps email at either address despite repeated tries. We're hoping this person will be willing to sign up for a gmail account and get the email that way. If not, then we will have to ask the Common Ap how this issue should be handled.

Back to the counselor forms -- I've found out a few things the hard way that I want to share. First, the Common Ap forms will "time out" if you leave them open for a long time, and you won't know this until you go to save your work and it says "invalid access". So, it's a good idea to write up your responses on your PC in Word and save them to a file. Then cut and paste to put it into the Common Ap.

Also, don't try to do any fancy formatting of what you are putting into these forms because the system will take what you've input, change the font, and put it into the space on the form. If you put in too many lines of text (even though you are within the required number of characters), the system will cut off the bottom lines of what you put in. So, after you input something, use the "Print Preview" feature to make sure it looks OK on the final form. You do have the option to delete what you've put in and try again before you submit it.

The Common Ap also allows you to upload things like your school profile and transcript. I found out the hard way that you need to make sure you choose a very basic font for these documents because the Common Ap will convert your non-standard font when you upload, and your document can end up not looking like you had intended. For instance, I used a transcript template from the HSLDA website with Perpetua font, and after uploading, the system had converted the font to something else, and the formatting was off. Fortunately, they let you delete what you uploaded and try again. Once I got it looking pretty in Times Roman, it uploaded without changing the format.

So -- if you're using the Common Ap, I'd suggest getting started a while before the deadline so you'll have time to work out any kinks that you encounter.

HTH,
Brenda