Colleges have gone green; they're printing less and almost all their materials are online. For many, the only way to access course listings and applications is through a college's Web site.
Here are three ways to make the process easier:
In North Carolina we are fortunate to have the College Foundation of North Carolina – www.cfnc.org – a terrific resource for planning, applying and paying for a student's education.
(South Carolina has www.che.sc.gov/scholar, with applications from 21 public and 8 private colleges. Other S.C. institutions will be added.)
Once students register, they have access to 110 colleges in North Carolina and out-of-state schools as well. The online application system is easy to use and is free except for the standard application fee charged by the college or university. The biggest benefit is that the CFNC Web site saves a student's information, allowing a student to input the info just once, even when applying to multiple colleges.
The site also includes a Career Center module that is designed to help students with all aspects of their career and education decision-making process. The Career Center has some great links to a variety of valuable assessment tools including an Interest Profiler, Learning Style Inventory and an Ability Profiler.
Another great resource to streamline the application process is the Common Application (www.commonapp.org). Commonly referred to as the Common App, this application is used by 346 mostly private colleges and universities.
Students should check out how many of the colleges they are considering applying to are on the list. This year's Common Application requires one 500 word essay, and students are allowed to choose their topic from one of six prompts.
Many of the Common Application colleges have an additional supplement with either short-answer questions or another set of essay prompts. Beware: The supplements are NOT optional. That means that if a student submits only the Common Application essay and does not complete the supplement, if a school has one, their application will be viewed as incomplete and will not be reviewed.
The Common Application is definitely the big man on campus but another group, the Universal College Application (UCA) – www.universalcollegeapp.com – , made its debut last year.
UCA's hope is to expand the use of its application to include many more public universities. UCA currently has 80 schools and is expanding.
Bierer is an independent college adviser based in Charlotte. Send questions to: lee@collegeadmissions
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