Everyone Needs a Common App Account

One simple thing can transform educational outcomes in America.

Photo by Mayer Tawfik on Unsplash

Everyone needs a Common App account. This is an imperative, not a recommendation. Nothing can transform higher education outcomes in America like everyone registering for a Common App account.

Every high schooler planing to graduate. Every high school counselor. Every parent of a high schooler. Every independent educational consultant. Every person who wants to help a student with the college process. NACAC should insist every high school counselor makes all their students sign up for the Common App. High school counselors across America should be leading sessions with juniors every spring that results in everyone getting a Common App account.

This is not an endorsement or promotion of the Common Application. In fact, it’s a call for the Common App to do more. Because every student in America does not have a Common App App account. The Common App has become such a dominant force in college that any student without one is behind the eight ball. The Common App allows students to fill out one application that can be used at over 1,100 schools, with 1,074 of them in the United States. The Common App’s centralized system also allows counselors and teachers to more easily send transcripts, school reports, and letters of recommendation. It really is invaluable for anyone thinking of applying to a 4-year college.

The advice “use the Common App to make applying to multiple colleges easier” is widespread. Both The College Board and the ACT have web pages on how to use the Common App. (NOTE: Interestingly, both organizations get the number of Common App members wrong.) Most high school counseling pages have a link to the Common App, urging students to make an account if they are planning on applying to a school using the Common Application. That undersells it. A Common App account is a necessity for applying to 4-year colleges.

The Common App is not a monopoly. Certain schools are not on the Common App–including the entire University of California System, the California State University System, MIT, and Georgetown. The Common App also isn’t the only application portal. The Coalition Application and The Common Black College Application offer similar advantages as the Common App. The Common App is just used by many more colleges than any other application portal. Students will likely need to use another application portal (especially a school-specific one), but having a Common App account has much more utility.

The Common App can easily brag it has a wide reach, but its own numbers show it can go further. 1,498,199 students submitted at least one Common Application in the 2024-2025 cycle. Over 10 million individual applications were sent, or about 9,000 on average to each school. The application spread is not even. New York University exclusively uses the Common App and receives over 100,000 applications each year. Still, most schools are seeing thousands of applicants through the Common App. Colleges, especially the highly popular and extremely selective ones, won’t think the Common App needs better reach.

Every student having a Common App account would be more transformative than every student taking the SAT or ACT. Every student on track to graduate would benefit from taking either test, and the testing companies are getting there. But the Common App has some catching up to do. 2,004,965 students took the SAT in the Class of 2025, while 1,380,130 in the same cohort took the ACT. More crucially, 68% of SAT-takers and 78% of ACT takers took the test in school.

Schools, districts, and entire state departments of education are requiring every high schooler under their watch to take a standardized test. Similar initiatives with the Common App would be better. Taking a standardized test doesn’t get students into colleges. Filling out the Common App can get students into college. The Common App has a Direct Admissions program. There are over 100 colleges that will send admission offers to students simply because they have filled out a full Common App.

The list of Direct Admissions schools is not full of highly selective or “name-brand” colleges. Applying to most schools is not as easy. For one, applying to schools costs money. The average application fee for colleges is $45, but can be up to $100. Applying to 8 to 12 colleges adds up. The Common App’s main source of revenue, nearly $54 million of its $61 million in 2024, was from student application fees. There are also fee waivers provided by the Common App, and 36% of Common App users were waiver eligible in 2024-2025.

That last number comes from the Common App’s state-by-state breakdown of its 2024-2025 applicants. That report really shows how much more widespread Common App usage could be. There is no state where 100% of graduates applied to at least one school through the Common Application. Most states are below 50% of graduates, and some are hovering closer to 10%. There are hundreds of thousands of students who can still be reached via the Common App. (A spreadsheet compiling the numbers from this report in one easily sortable place is available for Paid Subscribers at the bottom of this post.)

The infographic provided by Common App shows the gaps best. Accompanying the overall numbers is a map of the United States, broken down by county. Each county is shaded by overall number of applicants–with bare counties. Take West Texas, an illustrative case and the place I grew up. Lubbock County, home of Common App Member Texas Tech University, had 971 applicants from half-a-dozen high schools. One county West is Hockley County, whose county seat Levelland has a high school with 750 students. Hockley County had 34 applicants on the Common App. The county west of Hockley County is Cochran County, and Morton High School in Morton has just 350 students. But it had no students submit an application through the Common App.

There are students who could benefit from a Common App account in Cochran County, more than 34 in Hockley County, and more than 971 in Lubbock County. Now multiply those numbers by the rest of West Texas, all of Texas, and the entirety of the United States. There is more the Common App can do for students all over the country.

And it can happen if everyone gets a Common App account.