Fifty Years of the Common App

This year marks a significant milestone in the history of American higher education—the Common Application celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Over the past half-century, the Common Application has become the dominant force in the college-admissions process. What began as a bold experiment among 15 private colleges and universities has grown into an organization that now serves more than 1,100 institutions across all 50 states, in the District of Columbia, as well as in China, Japan, and several European countries.

Behind the impressive numbers, the Common App has significant downsides that are difficult to ignore. In the 2024-25 cycle alone, nearly 1.5 million first-year applicants completed the Common App, submitting more than 10 million applications. These figures reflect its steady growth over the years and underscore the organization’s importance in the higher-education sector.

The never-ending expansion of the Common Application—aimed at incorporating as many institutions as possible—has reached a new frontier. Earlier this year, the organization announced that it was welcoming its first cohort of community colleges into its membership.

The Common App appears to have drifted from its original purpose of serving students. The move was described as an effort to “close the gap in low- and middle-income students applying,” perfectly aligning with the organization’s stated goals of expanding access, increasing efficiency, and promoting equity in the admissions process.

Yet, behind the impressive number of participating institutions, the growing pool of applicants, and the mission-oriented narrative that seems almost beyond criticism, the Common Application has significant downsides that are difficult to ignore—especially given their profound impact on the higher-education admissions process.

The Promise of Access and Equity

The Common Application was founded in 1975 as an innovative experiment among 15 colleges. With the rise of the internet, the Common App has made it easier and more affordable for students to apply to multiple colleges. Over the years, it has increased the number of applications and broadened student participation, with a particular focus on underrepresented students.

Since 1975, the Common App has positioned itself as a pioneer in democratizing the admissions process. It has pursued this mission by offering a unified admissions portal, allowing students to apply to up to 20 schools, and, more recently, introducing a direct-admissions service that sends students official acceptance letters before they even submit an application.

While this may sound like a noble goal, albeit one pursued without much consideration for what could go wrong, recent data tell a different story. The Common App appears to have drifted from its original purpose of serving students—making it cheaper and easier to apply to multiple schools—and toward serving as a platform for universities to expand their “customer base,” all while maintaining their reputations as highly selective institutions.

Common App Consequences

The idea behind the Common App—making it easier and cheaper to apply to multiple schools—has had unintended consequences.

The most significant and perhaps the most toxic trait in today’s higher-education landscape has been the explosion of applications. This surge has driven acceptance rates down at universities across the country.

By allowing students to apply to as many as 20 schools, the Common App has become a tool for elite colleges to present admissions data in a way that makes them appear more selective than they truly are. This is one reason institutions such as Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology can boast about a three-percent acceptance rate for fall 2023—the lowest in the nation. Such figures are then used as marketing tools to attract even more prospective students.

The Common App has become a tool for elite colleges to appear more selective than they truly are. The trend is further reinforced not only by the Common App and universities themselves but by guidance counselors in high schools, who often encourage students to submit dozens of applications. When I came to the United States more than 10 years ago as a foreign-exchange student, I was stunned to hear from a guidance counselor that students who applied to five or more colleges would receive a $25 McDonald’s gift card. Such an incentive would be unheard of in Asian or European countries, where higher education is not approached with the same consumer-driven mentality.

The process discourages students from thinking as carefully as they should about their postsecondary plans. By encouraging students to apply to as many schools as possible, the process discourages them from thinking as carefully as they should about their postsecondary plans.

This also has negative consequences for colleges and universities. With students submitting so many applications, institutions struggle to predict and plan for their incoming freshman classes, while the inflation of applications places tremendous strain on admissions offices.

The Common Litmus Test 

In addition to relying on a business model that encourages students to apply to as many schools as possible—while helping universities inflate their admissions metrics—the Common Application also supports the DEI component of the admissions process.

The Common App offers students a list of seven essay prompts. Since the onset of the Covid pandemic, these prompts have remained largely unchanged.

The first and most prominent essay prompt reads: “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.”

The way this prompt is framed effectively encourages applicants to highlight as many points of race-and-gender “intersectionality” as possible. Heaven forbid our elite universities miss out on stories from students who identify as multiracial, gender-fluid, pansexual, or first-generation-immigrant agnostic Marxist—whose parents, incidentally, earn well over six figures. Without these supposed “victims of capitalism” enrolled in the nation’s most prestigious schools, the student body would apparently be incomplete. And the Common Application’s leadership seems to understand that well.

As a cherry on top, the Common Application portal also follows the pronoun trend. Beyond “male” and “female,” applicants can now select “nonbinary” or write in another gender identity of their choice. The same applies to legal sex, which offers the option of selecting “X” or providing another designation as part of a student’s application.

The Common Application’s leadership appears especially invested in gathering students’ gender-identification data. During the 2021-2022 application season, the organization revised its gender-identity questions to “better reflect” the more than one million students who use the platform each year.

Earlier this year, the Common App released a research summary titled First-Year Applicant Gender and Pronoun Trends from 2021-2023.

According to that report, “The most common write-in genders submitted by students were: Genderfluid (43.6% in 2023-24), agender (11.9%), genderqueer (8.9%), transman (7.5%), demigirl (3.6%), questioning (2.9%), trans masculine (2.2%), and trans woman (2.1%).”

Prompts encourage applicants to highlight as many points of race-and-gender “intersectionality” as possible. If these numbers are accurate—and they likely are—they offer a troubling glimpse into our future, one that does not appear especially bright given the growing emphasis on gender fluidity among the next generation of leaders.

What is most concerning is that the nation’s leading higher-education admissions organization, rather than promoting academic excellence, is actively encouraging this destructive behavior.

As a cherry on top, the Common Application portal also follows the pronoun trend. Direct Admissions = Preapproved

In 2023, the Common Application launched its direct-admissions program with 70 member colleges and universities. Since then, the program has expanded to 119 participating institutions.

According to the organization’s official website, direct admissions “bridges the gap between high school and higher education by proactively admitting students into college before they apply.” The stated purpose is to identify underrepresented students and encourage them to pursue higher education by sending official acceptance letters before they even submit an application.

While this may sound like a good thing, it more closely resembles receiving a preapproved loan offer with a flashy APR from a lending company you’ve never heard of.

Judging by the language used by the Common App, many of the students targeted for direct admissions are first-generation college applicants who often lack the financial and informational literacy needed to make fully informed decisions about pursuing higher education.

Since the end of World War II, earning a college degree has been considered both a societal norm and a ticket to a better life. Yet, in recent years, confidence in higher education has declined, while trade schools and vocational training have grown in popularity.

Today’s younger generation is increasingly eager to pursue “unconventional” career paths. Direct admissions, however, risk limiting their prospects by placing additional pressure on them to attend college—especially after they receive a formal acceptance letter from a school they never even applied to.

Much like shady lending companies with their preapproved cash-loan offers, direct admissions prey on students who don’t read the fine print—promising them a better life after graduation, which too often turns into student-loan slavery. Even more troubling, direct admissions reduce college education to a product that must be pushed onto customers and sold at any cost, embodying the purest form of the consumer mindset that has infected American higher education.

Innovation Leader or Monopolist? 

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Common Application, Jenny Rickard, the organization’s president and CEO, gave an interview to Inside Higher Ed in which she spoke at length about the staggering numbers of institutions and applicants using the platform.

With 1,100 member institutions across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, 1.5 million first-year applicants, and 10 million applications during the 2024-2025 cycle, the Common App has firmly established itself as the industry leader.

From this position of dominance, the organization dictates the rules surrounding application questions and rolls out new products such as direct admissions. So deeply embedded is it in the admissions process, nothing prevents the Common App from shaping the system however it chooses.

So deeply embedded is it in the admissions process, nothing prevents the Common App from shaping the system however it chooses. Over the years, a few competitors have tried to challenge the Common App—such as the Universal College Application and the Coalition Application—but none have managed to capture even a small share of its market.

The Common App’s unquestioned dominance raises an important question: Is it truly an innovation leader, or has it become a monopolist in the higher-education admissions industry, preventing any viable alternatives from emerging?

Higher-ed reformers may soon turn their attention to breaking up the admissions monopoly, as well. Until recently, regional higher-education accreditors operated in much the same way, positioning themselves as members of an accreditation cartel. With the launch of a new accrediting agency, however, that dynamic is beginning to change.

After taking on the accreditation cartel, higher-education reformers across the country may soon turn their attention to breaking up the admissions monopoly, as well.

The Future of the Common App 

The rise of AI, the projected decline in traditional-age students beginning in 2026, and the broader collapse of public confidence in higher education will have a profound impact on the future of the Common Application. In the near term, Common App executives may no longer be able to boast about staggering applicant numbers or inflated totals of submitted applications.

A decade from now, the higher-education admissions landscape is likely to resemble a battlefield—one in which colleges and universities, regardless of ranking, will be forced to compete fiercely for every student.

In the competition to recruit prospective students, colleges and universities will increasingly need to differentiate themselves by offering personalized admissions processes and enticing applicants with various incentives—just to encourage them to apply. This approach runs directly counter to the Common App’s business model of standardized, uniform applications that can be sent to as many as 20 member institutions at once.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT and other AI tools have already proven useful for students looking to cheat on exams or plagiarize essays. It is only a matter of time before AI begins to reshape the admissions process itself—matching students with colleges based on their grades, family socioeconomic status, hobbies, and personal preferences.

It would hardly be surprising if a college dropout—or a high-school overachiever rejected from his first-choice school—were to create an AI-powered app that disrupts the admissions process as we know it.

For the past 50 years, the Common App has established itself as both the leader and, eventually, the monopolist in the higher-education application space. But, with the rise of AI, the looming demographic decline, and the growing momentum within the Republican Party to reform higher education, the Common App’s future may be far less certain.

Jovan Tripkovic is communications manager at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.