College & Workforce Readiness News in Brief

Common Application Makes Changes After Tough Year

By The Associated Press — May 19, 2014 1 min read
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The creators of the Common Application for college admissions say they have made changes that should prevent snags that had the high school class of 2014 tweeting horror stories.

The Common Application is accepted by more than 500 colleges and universities and allows students to apply to multiple schools at once, but it had a rough application season after new technology was rolled out last year.

Officials said they’ve hired a new interim CEO, conducted a review of what went wrong, and put internal checks in place.

The most common problems were related to essay formatting, difficulty submitting an application, and an inability to determine if application fees had been paid. A review by an outside firm found that the technology had been rolled out without first being properly tested.

A version of this article appeared in the May 21, 2014 edition of Education Week as Common Application Makes Changes After Tough Year

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