What Happens When? The College Admissions Calendar.

For college admissions May 1st marks the New Year — the end of one college admissions year and the beginning of the next. This is a great time to look at what happens throughout the year for anyone on a path toward college. (Note:  I’m sure to have missed some vital elements in the timeline. I welcome your additions or corrections — email me or list them in comments below.)

May

• May 1 is the deadline for students to accept an offer from, and pay a deposit to, the college of their choice. Most, but not all colleges, that is. Here’s why (and no, it’s not for the benefit of the students): Random thoughts on May 1.
• First two full weeks of May:  AP exams. All HS students taking AP courses take the exams at the same time.
• SAT & SAT Subject tests (aka SAT IIs) offered. Typically SATs are offered every month except April, July, August, and September. SAT Subject tests are offered every time SATs are offered except March, but not all subjects are offered each time. Specific details on APs, SATS, and SAT Subject tests can be found at the College Board’s website, Big Future.
• Parents and college counselors urge HS juniors to request recommendation letters from teachers before school lets out. (Note: typically teachers write the letters in the fall and upload them to the Common App interface after the student has specified his or her colleges. However, many teachers appreciate the advance notice and the opportunity to prep for the letters during the summer.)

June

• Orientation for new college students begins, this usually includes help with registration. Parents are usually invited and are offered their own orientation track.
• Parents of HS students may want to visit campuses while on summer road-trips.

July

• AP scores are sent to exam-takers; exams are scored on a scale of 1 [low] to 5; 3 is considered a passing score. The more selective the college, the higher score required for credit. Some colleges do not provide credit, but may still use the scores for placement. See college websites for each college’s AP credit policy. Here’s what UVa accepts in the College of Arts & Sciences.
• Parents and college counselors urge rising seniors to start drafting essays. Some students do. Read: How to Write a College Essay (in 10 Steps).

August

• The Common App goes live for the new application season. Some students actually apply in August. (Nobody I know.) Bookmark this site:  Common Questions for the Common App.
• For new college students:  first tuition payment is required!

September

• Many HS guidance counselors provide detailed information to seniors, including how much time is required for transcript requests, recommendation letters, etc.
• Many HS guidance counselors will also provide guidelines on scholarship applications.

October

• Earliest Early Admission and Early Decision deadlines occur. (Note: the 2012-13 Common App listed October 30 as the earliest application deadline. However, many college counselors will advise students to submit at least two weeks prior to the published deadline.)
• Many high schools offer PSAT/NMSQTs to sophomores (mostly for practice) and juniors (for National Merit Scholarship qualification).
• The October SAT date is typically the latest that will get scores reported to colleges for Early deadlines.
• Parents need to check financial aid requirements for early applications. Some will require an application in the fall.

November

• Early application reading season for admissions officers, extends into January.
• Parents and college counselors may urge seniors to finish essays over Thanksgiving break. Some students do.

December

• The December SAT date is typically the latest that will get scores reported for regular deadlines.
• Early decisions start to be received in December. Some HS students face rejection for the first time. (Deal with it and move on.)
• Important:  many college decisions will be provided via the college’s SIS, requiring the student to log-in. Keep a file of the log-in IDs used for different colleges.
• Important:  now is when HS seniors need to check email regularly. See Calling All Texters: Read Your Email!
• December 31 is the deadline for the majority of regular admission applications.

January

• The new FAFSA goes live January 1st. Some families actually submit that day. (Nobody I know.) Read: Catch-22: How and When to Complete the FAFSA and Your Tax Returns.
• Regular application reading season for admissions officers, extends through March.
• Sophomores and juniors receive PSAT scores. Approximately three hours later they start to receive emails and marketing mailers from colleges.
• HS course registration may begin for the next school year.
• Summer enrichment opportunities often require applications by January or February. See a very long list our local school division provides here.

February

• Many colleges require the FAFSA submission by the end of February. Parents need to prepare preliminary, or draft, tax returns in order to submit the FAFSA. Bookmark this site: FAFSA FAQs.

March

• Regular admission decisions should be received by the end of March.
• Once parents file finished tax returns, they must change the FAFSA and/or link it to the return via the FAFSA/IRS interface.

April

• HS juniors may want to spend their spring break visiting campuses.
• HS seniors may want to attend admitted day programs for specific questions, to help aid their final decisions. Read: Who should attend an admitted student event?
• Many communities hold college fairs, bringing a large number of campus reps to one location.
• Financial aid letters, in all their confusing glory, may be received through the month of April.
• HS juniors who have qualified for National Merit recognition are notified.
• Last two weeks of April:  many HS students put life on hold to prep for AP exams in early May. Except for Prom, spring sports, part-time jobs, and, like, hanging out with friends.
• Last two weeks of April:  many HS senior families square up to the college decision.

What did I miss? Write in comments below. Thanks!

Related articles

• Scary trend shows more colleges requesting SAT Subject Tests
• Why are college and scholarship applications so complicated?
• The Choice Blog: April College Checklist for Seniors

College rejection letters, how colleges boost their rankings, and funny math.

Via sunnyydoodles.tumblr.com; outdated since Stanford charged $90 in 2012.

Only a few more days and college admission departments will send a boat load of letters (or push email “send” buttons) to reject millions of applicants.

Colleges will accept a few, too, but the real news to be trumpeted across the land in early April will be how many students they rejected.

From last year see, Ivy League colleges post record low acceptance rates, via Money.cnn.com:

Your odds of getting into some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges are shrinking.

The country’s eight Ivy League institutions finished sending out their admission decisions to applicants late Thursday. And many of the elite schools — including Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth and Cornell — are reporting that they accepted record low percentages of applicants for the upcoming school year.

As colleges send out more rejections they can also reduce their selectivity rates — the percentage of applications accepted out of those received — and help boost their rankings in US News & World Report and other popular  lists.

The story that doesn’t often make the front pages in admission season, though, is what goes into the calculations of the acceptance rates. The Common App has made it much easier to apply to more colleges, as long as Mom and Dad are willing to pay the application fees (up to $90 or more, each). Just because an elite school — say, Harvard with 34,302 applicants in 2012 or UC-Berkeley with 61,702 — receives more and more applicants each year, does that mean they receive proportionately more that are qualified?

Valerie Strauss wrote in the Washington Post last year, in Some 2012 college admissions rates hit new lows:

More kids who don’t have a prayer of getting into some of these schools apply anyway, but schools still get to brag that they have a record number of applications. As a result, some admissions counselors note that the percentage of kids who have a real shot at getting into some of these schools doesn’t go up much — if at all — from year to year.

Yet the reduction in acceptance rates remains the juicier story — and the story that helps support the narrative that students (and their parents) need to do anything to get into college, no matter the cost, retention rates, graduation rates, resulting debt load, or the job outlook.

Here are a couple more perspectives on the acceptance rate math. I’m quoting a paragraph or two, but the essays aren’t that long and — if you like this sort of thing — interesting.

Kevin Carey, in Stalking the True College Acceptance Rate for The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote about the fifteen minutes it might take to screen applications into piles for Yes, No, and Maybe.

There are inevitably a lot of easy “No” decisions, because a substantial number of students treat elite college applications like a $90 lottery ticket. Such unqualified applicants don’t change the odds of qualified students being accepted. There could be 10,000 “No’s”, 100,000, it doesn’t matter. It only matters how many “Yes” and “Maybe” applicants apply (and how many legacies, athletes, Hollywood ingenues, and senator’s sons…).

. . .

From the student’s perspective, there’s no difference between applying to five elite colleges and being accepted at one and applying to 10 elite colleges and being accepted at one. You can only go to one. But the student who applies to 10 colleges drives institutional acceptance rates down, even though he or she doesn’t change the number that actually matters: the total ratio of high-quality applicants (not applications) to high-quality spots.

In another piece, from 2010, Carey cited Chad Aldeman, who suggests in The Quick and The Ed that we Switch College Admissions to a Single Lottery:

Now consider for a second that you are a high school junior and you see these rates. It’s becoming easier than ever to apply for multiple schools, so what is your rational course of action?

You’re going to apply for tons of schools, thinking that at least one will let you in. And the next year, when the acceptance rates go even lower (they’ve been falling for years), students will apply to even more schools. The chances of any one student getting into any one school will become smaller and smaller, even as the number of spaces at those schools keeps pace with demographic changes. The spaces themselves are not becoming more scarce; it’s the admissions craze that’s making them look that way.

Back to the 2010 article by Kevin Carey, for The Chronicle of Higher Education. He outlined the math in Real College-Acceptance Rates are Higher Than You Think, then put the acceptance rates into perspective with his last paragraph:

And of course it’s always worth noting that the vast majority of college students don’t go to a selective college at all and they’re the ones we should be worrying about.

More on that — in this week’s news — to come.

Related articles

• And the letters are gone!
• From the NACAC Study: What is NO LONGER Important in College Admission

Why are college and scholarship applications so complicated?

I wrote recently about a number of deadlines our household faced this winter. (You can read about it here.) While these were not (yet) college deadlines, they were similar to the Common Application and other admission applications in their make-up, each requiring student information, essays, transcripts, and teacher recommendations.

Via xkcd.com

On deadline day for a summer lab internship, Mod Squad Julie asked why the application needed to be so complicated. I’m not sure it needed to be — but it certainly was. I’ve been thinking about that since, especially since she will be working on college applications later this year.

1.  Every application is different. The actual interface for each admission, financial aid, and scholarship application is determined by the individual colleges and other entities. The Common App provides some streamlining, but most colleges offering the Common App also require their own supplementary forms. Some are available via the Common App; some are only available via the college website. Like it or not, each interface requires its own learning curve.

2.  Deadlines and requirements are not always clear. Some colleges do this well, providing a complete timeline for applicants. On other websites, the admission deadlines are separate from the financial aid deadlines, which are also separate from the supplementary submission deadlines for arts or other specialty programs.

3.  Most applications have multiple, moving parts. M.S. Julie’s summer program application is a great example of this. A new program offered through UVa required the following:

• Fillable pdf application form to be downloaded, completed, saved, and emailed back.
• Teacher recommendation letter to be downloaded by the teacher, completed, saved, and emailed back.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part I, to be completed online via the University’s SIS.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part II, to be printed, completed by parents and mailed in paper form.
• UVa application for visiting HS students, part II, to be printed, completed by HS guidance or Principal and mailed with transcript in paper form.

This combination of online form submission, pdfs to be emailed, and paper forms to be mailed makes my head spin. I understand how this happened — a new program requests information specific to it and additional to the standard summer application the University already requires. The administrators were very helpful when we contacted them with questions. I’m just saying, this was complicated.

4.  Deadlines.  Julie has fine-tuned her ability to perform triage on a multitude of school and extracurricular schedule demands. Adding essay-writing and the many steps required to build an application makes the deadline dance even more interesting. Or, complicated.

5.  High stakes raise the stress level. A high level of interest in gaining entrance — to a college or summer program — raises the stakes for providing every bit of information the application requires and writing the best responses to the essay prompts or questions.

We’ve had a lovely break since M.S. Pete wrote applications in the fall of 2011. It’s time to get back into the game and this was good practice for both Julie and me.

Related articles

• Senior Year is Approaching – Time to Step It Up!

3 reasons to apply to college early. Get one done.

I chatted with my brother last week. His older son — we’ll call him Starsky — is a senior in a small high school in the rural Midwest. Starsky is still working on his longish list of colleges, still visiting a few, and recently developed a plan for what he might like to study in college.

Mod Squad Pete and Starsky in August. Pretty sure they weren’t talking about college applications.

All this is great.

Then I asked, “Is he applying anywhere early? Not early decision, since he’s still working on where he wants to apply, but early action.” My brother said, “Not yet.”

I did not scream over the telephone, but I’m sure I strongly suggested that Starsky consider applying somewhere early.

(Both my brother and I would agree that I obsess about these things more than he does. I’m sure his approach is healthier. [Cue the emails from friends reminding me of this blog's tagline.])

Truth be told, Starsky is an excellent student, a superb athlete, and an all-around great kid — he’ll do well wherever he decides to go to college and the school will be fortunate to have him.

However — and Starsky, I’m talking to you now — here are three reasons why you should apply to at least one college via early action:

1.  Get one done now, so you have that great sense of accomplishment. Most students and parents have heard war stories from other families about missed deadlines, computers or websites crashing, lost recommendation letters, late night stressed-out arguments, and more. It’s not insurmountable, it’s just tough. There’s a huge difference in how it feels to be almost done with an application and how it feels after you’ve clicked on “submit.” That high can take you through however many more applications you plan to complete.

2.  Get one done now, so you’ve seen and completed the Common Application interface through to the end. The Common App has made it much easier to apply to a number of colleges, but no one working their way through it the first time would call it easy. It requires your full attention:

• Many colleges require supplementary applications and many of those require supplementary essays.
• Some elements need to be written separately, then cut-and-pasted into the interface. Other pieces need to be uploaded.
• Some colleges require the fee paid prior to submission, others vice versa.
• Printing the App for proofreading leads to confusion: not all colleges require every question the application provides. However, the printed App includes those questions, showing them unanswered.

Completing the Common App all the way through one time will make all the subsequent applications much easier. Plus, now’s the time to figure out how to submit different versions or how to correct something for another college.

3.  Get one done now, because early action provides early responses. It’s difficult to describe the feeling you will get when you receive that first acceptance. It doesn’t matter so much which college it is — that’s when you know you will go to college. Receiving an acceptance in December is worth busting your gut in October. Plus it makes the January 1st to April 1st wait for regular action responses that much easier to take.

If you think I’m being hard on you, Starsky, just text your cousin, Mod Squad Pete. He’ll tell you this is nothing compared to having to live with my “encouragements” day in, day out.

Related articles

• HS students: 4 questions about getting ready for college applications
• Applying for College: Choosing Early Decision vs Early Action
• The Uncommon Common App
• How to Know if You Should Apply to College Early

HS students: 4 questions about getting ready for college applications

While it seems like school just started — with Back to School night last week — our HS calendar points out a couple of college-related dates for juniors and seniors.

1.  Have you started thinking about it at all? Next week our school’s Counseling Department will offer College Planning Night for parents, with break-out sessions depending on the student’s class year. There’s really only time for general information, but if a family is just getting started in the process it’s a good place to begin. Each family / student will need to determine for themselves how deeply they want to dig into the details.

From collegeboard.org

2.  Will you take the PSAT? Next month Mod Squad Julie (11th grade) and all other juniors and sophomores at her school will take the PSAT. Sophomores take it for practice, to get a sense of what the SAT is like, and to get an idea of which areas of the test they may need to work on. Juniors take it for prep for the SAT too, but for them it is also the qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarships — this could be truly significant for their access to selective colleges as well as merit funding.

3.  Will you take the SAT this fall? Seniors are likely to be taking the SAT in early October — if you need to do that and you haven’t registered for it yet, run to CollegeBoard’s site for late registration — so final scores can be reported for Early Acceptance or Early Decision deadlines. Tests taken on October 6th will report scores beginning October 25th.

4.  Have you drafted any essays? This is probably one of the stickiest pieces of the college application process. Well, essays and the short answer Common App question and dealing with the Common App user interface and, yes, deciding which colleges to apply to — they’re all sticky. But the one that seems to take the longest for many seniors is to write well and eloquently about one’s self for the personal essay. If you — or your student — haven’t started essay drafts yet, now would be the time to do that. Today.

And just think, this time next year, you could have this all behind you, living the college life, tweeting something like:

M.S. Pete tweet, Sept 2012.

Related articles

• 4 Summer Tasks for College Prep.
• The 6 Steps Juniors Need to be Doing Right Now.

5 things I learned when I completed the FAFSA

No matter how much you may read about how to complete online applications — whether the Common App, the CSS Profile, the FAFSA, or a college-specific application — they still require hands-on learning. You need to jump in and start working through them to understand how to complete them.

I recently filed the FAFSA for the first time. I didn’t submit it as early as I wished, but the form is now done. [Let's ignore the tweet I happened to see January 1st from someone who filed that day.]

Here are a few things I learned by doing…

1.  Timing is everything. There would be far fewer questions about how to complete the FAFSA if it were due April 20, instead of ASAP after it becomes  available online January 1. We would simply take a look at our recently filed tax forms, pull the numbers needed, and click submit. The problem is that federal money is allocated by the colleges on a first-come, first-serve basis, so filing earlier is better. Some states set a deadline of late February. We were able to get a draft 1040 worked up for the numbers we needed; we’ll validate the FAFSA after we sign our tax return.

2.  Know your assets. Pension plan? Primary residence? College savings plan? You need to know which of your assets count and which don’t. The FAFSA treats assets differently than the CollegeBoard Profile does. Double-check FAFSA  help.

Investments do not include the home you (and if married, your spouse) live in; cash, savings and checking accounts; the value of life insurance and retirement plans (401[k] plans, pension funds, annuities, non-education IRAs, Keogh plans, etc.).

3.  Careful which buttons you push. Every time I saw these two buttons:  “Clear all data” and “Start over” on the online form, I imagined the nightmare clicking either of those buttons would produce.

2012-13 Fafsa screenshot

2012-13 Fafsa screenshot

4.  Instant feedback is helpful. As soon as the application is submitted, fafsa.ed.gov presents a confirmation for printing. That confirmation provides your confirmation number, graduation and retention rates for the colleges you’ve selected, and an estimated Expected Family Contribution, based upon the numbers submitted. Sure, it’s only an estimate, but it’s a step taken toward figuring out college costs.

5.  It’s not over yet. Of course. There’s always another step.

• We should receive an email, after our taxes are filed, to remind us to link up taxes and FAFSA.
• Two days after submitting the application, Mod Squad Pete received his Student Aid Report.
• That same day he received an update request for the Profile detailing the long list of items they need to receive by March 1, including the signed 1040, all schedules, all 1099s, etc. Our final 1099 is supposed to be mailed mid-February…

Yes, the deadlines and complications continue.

Related articles

• Catch-22: how and when to complete the FAFSA and your tax returns. (drstrangecollege.wordpress.com)
• 11 Mistakes I Don’t Want to Make on the FAFSA (drstrangecollege.wordpress.com)

Goodbye 2011: Most popular posts and searches and a gratifying thank you..

People filing tax forms in 1920. Image via Wikipedia.

It’s time to move on to what the new year brings, but since that includes income tax forms, FAFSA completion, and scholarship apps, I’ll just hit pause and look back at 2011 for a minute.

I started writing this blog in late May; the response has been gratifying and the reader/viewer numbers have grown steadily. All that is a wonderful bonus to my original goal of learning how to follow this path of college search, admissions, and finance. Thank you!

The most viewed posts were all about the application and trying to get it right:

• Found a Mistake on the Common App After Submission? No correcting it.
• Correcting myself… on correcting the Common App.
• The 6 Worst College Application Mistakes.
• Working through Common App mistakes, corrections and changes.

Ah, yes, I have noticed that my most popular post of the year had to be followed-up with a correction, which became the second most popular post. Sigh.

The next four varied a bit more:

• 17 College Interview Questions from Willian & Mary.
• College Admissions Secrets.
• Best. College. Acceptance. Letter. Ever.
• How to Write a College Essay (in 10 Steps)

Given the most popular posts, it’s not surprising that the majority of search terms leading readers here related to fixing a problem or answering a question or moving a college, etc. on the Common Application. Some of those search terms just made me a bit sad:

“if i sent another version of the common app, will schools get the original and the new version?”

This search intrigued me, especially since it was used, verbatim, four times:

“my+student+forgets+to+hand+work+in+timely.+what+college+will+work+for+her”

Will this be the search of my future?

“How to stop worrying about college age children.”

A large number of people searched for the Doonesbury comic about the cost of college. Rather dismaying, though, that the majority of those searches spelled it, “Doonsbury.”

Finally, one of the most gladdening moments of writing the blog came in a comment from a reader named Andy. He posted a question asking where to find the “Move Colleges” button on the Common App. Once he found it (it’s tricky) and was able to make it work, his response:

Thank you sooo much for your help.

You don’t know how much I appreciate it.

Actually, since Mod Squad Pete went through many of these same concerns, I think I have an idea. So very glad to be of help.

Best wishes to you all for the new year.

Related articles

• 4 Must-Ask Questions for Your High School Guidance Counselor (usnews.com)
• How to finish college applications without going bonkers? The family chimes in. (drstrangecollege.wordpress.com)

How to finish college applications without going bonkers? The family chimes in.

Via Wikipedia.

After the frenzy of the past few weeks, our house is relatively calm. There will be more college-related tension to come, but for now, the pressure has lifted.

In a quiet moment, I cannot help thinking about the students — and their families  – still working their way through the ridiculously obtuse elements of the Common App, some college supplements, and some college websites. Once you’ve added the roller-coaster dynamics of the parent-teen relationship, the high emotions involved with the entire process, and the impending deadline for regular admissions:  yikes.

Just in case this might help:

For questions about the Common App, start with their Common Questions for Applicants here.

With questions for a particular college, take a look first at its admissions blog, if it has one. For example:

• Johns Hopkins University provided Q&As a couple of weeks back with this post: 2011 Coming to a Close, Regular Decision Deadline is Here!. That post also references JHU’s admissions FAQ.
• UVa‘s Dean J has made a number of recent posts to the University of Virginia admissions blog, Notes from Peabody. See Deadline definition, Some last minute application information, and Regular decision deadline is around the corner for great information, including how to reach Dean J directly with questions (Twitter, GoogleChat, email, etc.).

Still polishing essays or short-answers? Parents cannot write anything for you, but they can proofread, read essays aloud, double-check word- or character-counts.

Sometimes, the most helpful step is to walk away from the job for five minutes. Here’s what people in this house would do…

From Mod Squad Julie:  “I would go outside and shoot baskets for five minutes. The only thing is, I would probably stay longer than that.” Parent response: “What, you’d shoot until someone asked you to come back in and get to work?” Julie: “No, I usually say to myself I’ll go back to work after I make the next shot. Then once I’ve made it, I think: that felt good, let me do that again.”

From Mod Squad Linc:  “Take the dog outside and chase her around the house a few times. Wait. Pete’s done, right?”

From Mod Squad Pete:  “Take a music break, especially if you have a record player. Put an album on. I would recommend On Green Dolphin Street, by the Miles Davis Quintet.” [Whoops, there go ten minutes.]

From Mod Squad Dad:  “Get some exercise and fresh air — take a short, fast walk.”

From me:  Take a quick food break — make a smoothie, grab a handful of nuts to munch on. Then sit back down and plow through to the finish line — that will bring lots of positive energy.

Good luck to all!

Related articles

• College Admissions Secrets. (drstrangecollege.wordpress.com)
• How to Apply to College… and When. (drstrangecollege.wordpress.com)
• Tackling colleges’ Common Application (cbsnews.com)

Working through Common App mistakes, corrections and changes.

Recently I wrote:  Found a Mistake on the Common App After Submission? No Correcting It.

Fortunately, two readers commented with instructions on how to do just that:  Correcting Myself… On Correcting the Common App.

Mod Squad Pete, working through regular admissions applications, just updated and corrected his Common App after it had been submitted to three colleges for Early Action.

Estimated time to create new Common App?  “About three minutes.”

Ease of creating new Common App?  “Easy.”

Did you have to upload the Common App essays again? “Nope. All the information is there, same as before. But now it’s not grayed-out in the new version, so you can make changes.”

Also:  “You can toggle back and forth between the original and the new version to move colleges from one to the other.”

Glad that’s done.

Related articles

• The Common App Threat (collegevideos.wordpress.com)
• Still Working on College Application Essays? (drstrangecollege.wordpress.com)

Correcting myself… on correcting the Common App.

I just wrote about the impossibility of correcting or changing the Common App once it has been submitted to a college. You can read that here.

Thanks to the research / detective work done by commenters Kim and Ilana DeBare, I need to correct my post. The process is not simple nor self-evident, but it can be done.

Here’s what Kim wrote:

Regarding the problem of wanting to change the essay for another college after you’ve already submitted the application to one school: While trying to find an answer to a problem my daughter was having with the Common Application, I searched all over their website one day and stumbled upon “alternate version”.

Here’s how I got there: On their website, go to “Contact Us” for a drop-down menu, then click on “Support Center”. Then click on “Application Support Center”, then “Completing the Application” (on the left), then “General Questions”. Number 7 says “I want to create another version of my application”. In the instructions it specifically says, “All data will be transferred from the original version to the alternate and it is all editable. However, any uploads you’ve done (personal essay or additional information) will not be transferred.”

It appears this is how you would solve the problem of wanting to change your essay. Haven’t tried this ourselves, but let us know if you do.

Here’s Ilana’s follow-up:

Yes, there is a way to create alternative versions for different colleges. Kim is right. You create one version to begin with. Then you go to a special url, http://tinyurl.com/alternateversion and login with your existing username and password.

That will take you to the Common App page, where you will see info about the app you’ve already submitted. Click on the “replicate” link to make the alternate version. When this is complete, a second version will appear on your screen and a drop-down list will appear in the upper right hand corner so you can toggle between different versions.

You only need to go that tinyurl link the first time. If you want to create further versions, you can do it from the Replicate link on your main Common App page.

You will have a separate MyColleges page for each version. To move an institution from one version to another, select the college an click the “move colleges” button.

Mod Squad Pete does have a change he wants to make before submitting the Common App for regular admission, so he’ll be trying this soon. Maybe I can get him to report back?

Thank you again to Kim and Ilana for the help!