Common App

Okay.

So, you know, I did for a number of years, I was a big supporter of an alternative to the Common App called Coalition for College, which was trying to invent, and it sort of petered out, unfortunately, an alternative way for kids to apply to college.

And so I would give the keynotes for their meetings to, you know, 250 admissions officers, almost every selective college represented there.

And I would go after the difference between calculus and statistics.

... rising seniors to knock out those essays.

The Common App is open.

And unfortunately, not as often as it should be.

Yeah.

I mean, when the economy tightens, you got to ask the question, is it worth the amount of money or going into debt for the four years to get that degree? the number of participating institutions has more than tripled since the 2023-24 academic year.

So that's about a fifth of the schools that use what's called the Common App, which lots and lots of students use to apply to lots and lots of colleges.

So here's the president of Kalamazoo College in Michigan, Carlin Crowley.

We can no longer take a posture that expects our students to come to us.

Okay.

So if you don't know, uh, when you go on the Common App, you put in your activities and you rank them, loosely rank them, um, by importance or, like, how much they mean to you.

Um, so yeah.

We're just gonna get right into it.

And also understanding that the majority of colleges are, do accept a lot of their applicants.

I didn't know about the Common app that you talked about in your book.

That is new since I worked for a university and got my master's degrees.

Tell us a little bit about the Common app and what that is.

Yeah, so the Common App is one place where a student can apply to many different colleges.

But because of that, many students do, and they tend to apply to more competitive schools because why not? I mean, everything is there.

You have your personal statement.

Yeah, I am 15 years past watching someone apply for college.

So the Common App had just arrived.

You just finished it.

You got another one coming.

They want to build all these fancy dorms and labs and other departments, and they've got a lot of administrator salaries to pay for, more than they have students.

So that's one of their problems, Hugh.

And the other thing, as you mentioned, was the common app.

Despite the fact that you're having – this is what I mean about this weird converse reality – despite that you're going to have – fewer kids out there applying to college, the Common App makes it much easier for a kid today to simply click a button.

It's a great title.

For the Common App, you get to pick 10 and it does matter, not just the amount you can cram into the small character count, but also the order and what you're choosing to focus on.

So we're going to break that down today as well as talk about potential pratfalls.

Totally.

And when we say activities list, what we're referring to as related to the common application is there's an activity section of the common application, which allows you to list 10 of your activities and some details about it, your title, any activities.

any specific positions or achievements with a very limited character count and an order that matters.

There's an activity section.

So it is important to not sleep on it.

And the application kind of process for that is split in two as well.

So you'll submit your common app thing, which will be viewed by the, entire BU admissions team, and then your like creative supplement, which will be viewed by the School of Theatre admissions team.

And both of those things have to be strong in order for you to receive an offer in the end of the day.

When you get into the program, I'll go with the acting BFA, because that's kind of like the most rigorous conservatory style program that we offer.

Some people will be, but not everyone.

There are scholarships available.

There are merit scholarships, which kind of come from, I mentioned in the admissions process, there's your kind of common app.

academic thing plus your artistic one those merit scholarships usually come from the academic side of things bu is an r1 research university so they are more set up for supporting students on the academic side school of theater does have some artistic scholarships too i would say that they are less substantial monetarily than the merit scholarships from the academic side.