CC #2: Applying for Colleges

In a recent article written by Richard Perez-Pena entitled, "Online Application Woes Makes Students Anxious and Put Colleges Behind Schedule", Perez-Pena talks about how students are rushing to send in their application to colleges. Since colleges are now going to online applications students are constantly applying to all sorts of colleges online. The early application deadline is coming to an end thus making students apply as fast as they can.

Perez-Pena interviews Jason C. Locke, associate vice provost for enrollment at Cornell University. "I've been a supporter of the Common App, but in this case, they've really fallen down," said Locke. Common App, also known as Common Application, is where students apply online for their colleges and lately this website has been malfunctioning. The author of this article intentions are to let his readers known that something is going wrong with the website used to send in college applications.

"Colleges around the country have posted notices on their admissions Web sites, warning of potential problems in processing applications," writes Perez-Pena. The author in a way tries to warn students, or whoever reads the article, that colleges are sending out messages on their personal websites to warn students before hand. Most students do not expect any malfunctions to happen when they submit their information to colleges, and when every little bit goes wrong the students freak out. They have every wright to considering the reasons why.

To give a better understanding of what has been going wrong with the college essays the author uses a 12th grader from Manhattan as an example by saying, "When she entered her essays into the application, what appeared on her computer screen was a garbled mess. Some words were mashed together; others were split in two by random spaces; there were swaths of blank space where text should have been; paragraph indentations were missing." No one would have known what was gong wrong with these applications if Richard Perez-Pena hadn't used an example. Most people had no idea what was going wrong with the website considering they had not really heard anything until this article was released.

My connection would be to my school considering that all 12th graders had to submit a application to our community college, UACCB. Since most or none of the students knew how to submit an application to colleges a representative from UACCB came to our school to help us out. Almost every senior applied online to a UACCB except a few who had difficulties with their information.

In conclusion, the article that Richard Perez-Pena posted helped many kids including myself on this information he has posted. Not very many people knew exactly what was/is going wrong with Common Application. I especially had no idea. Now that this is posted students will more than likely wait to apply to their colleges online.