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The Common Application revealed

November 13th, 2012

With all of the questions surrounding the college application process, the Common Application is designed to alleviate confusion and help streamline the application process. With all of the follow up concerns we field at Study Hut about the Common App, it is clear that there is still plenty of confusion regarding how this process works.

The Common Application membership association is a non-profit organization that allows first-year and transfer students to apply to over 500 colleges and universities using one simple application. For nearly 35 years this organization has supported countless students in applying to a variety of schools including private, public, bi-coastal, Midwestern, and even international.
Applications are available in both online and print versions to member institutions that promote student access to education through using a well-rounded evaluation and selection process. With the help of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) students have been provided with reliable services that promote success in the college application process.

In more simple English, certain colleges and universities accept the common application in place of an application specifically to that particular school. This is advantageous to students; it allows students to fill out the common application, including the essay and short answer questions, and then select which schools to apply to. Any student or parent who has ever been through the arduous college application process knows how tedious it can be to fill out application information over and over and over. With the Common Application, students can apply to any participating school by simply clicking on that school and selecting it for application. Obviously, there is a cost for this, as there will be will all college applications, but it is no more costly than any other application. With the Common App, students can focus on making sure that their essays and responses are perfect, and then move on to focus on the bigger, more important question: what college do I want to attend?

Helping with the College Application Process

October 17th, 2012

The overall majority of high school students, if not all, have the ultimate goal to complete high school and move onto the bigger world of colleges and universities. Now we are in the major season of application process with students taking final SATs, narrowing down schools and writing entrance essays. With so many things that go into getting into college, choosing a school out of the over 2,000 universities in America and almost 4,700 universities worldwide, the daunting and often times confusing application process and trying to find scholarships, many students often end up rushing through applications at the last minute or not even going through the effort. However, it does not need to be that way – with the proper preparation and effort, the process can be a breeze!

I recommend having a student start the application process around the summer before their senior year in high school. Generally the student has lots of free time to surf the internet and read through lots of information about different school, which is the first and most important step in the process: deciding which schools to apply to out of the thousands to choose from. The best way to do this is scour the internet for information, visit the campus and talk to friends and relatives that have attended the schools they are interested in. After this preliminary survey, try and narrow the potential schools to a list of 25-30, then go into a full depth research of those schools and start eliminating the ones that fall out of favor. From this new research, try and get to between 10-20 schools. Then you will want to visit these schools to narrow it down to your final 7-12 schools to actually send applications to.

The next step after choosing the schools is to actually apply! This process may seem daunting as almost every school has a different application process and requirements. The solution to this should have come from the earlier research done from choosing which schools to apply to: Application deadline, online application process, essay and letters of recommendation requirements.
The final step after applying to these schools is hopefully finding some free money to pay for the schools since we could all use some free money. Often times high schools have school programs or scholarship binders to send to local businesses, but there are countless scholarships for almost anything and everything you can think of, and all this requires is more research.
However, if after all of this you still have no clue – never fear! All of us at the Study Hut have gone through the process of applying ourselves, and have helped many other students get into their dream school. We offer a comprehensive College Application program to help with every application need, be it writing personal statements, getting scholarships, or even just filling out the applications. Time is running out – many deadlines are in November and December of this year, so let’s get a move on!

College Application Packages