The Common App: How/What do I need to do?

[Sandragood1]

Hello,  I'm hoping that you all can help me out.  The help desk at the Common App is garbage.

 

From reading other posts, it seems that I need to submit information about our homeschool, about dd's courses, and I don't know what else.

 

How do I do this?  They have sent me no link and appear to have no place to create a log in for me as counselor.

 

??!!

 

Thanks,

Sandra

 

[regentrude]

Has your student created an account?

 

The student needs to choose recommenders. One of them would be the guidance counselor - you. The student needs to put in the recommender info, and then the recommenders (and you) will receive an email from the CA inviting them to create an account that is linked to the student's CA account.

[Sandragood1]

Yes, she has. She says that she put me in as a recommendor... I will have to double check that.

 

Thanks

[regentrude]

have you checked the spam folder of your email account?

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Yes, she has. She says that she put me in as a recommendor... I will have to double check that.

 

Thanks

 

Last year there was a two part process for recommenders.  A student would "invite" a recommender by putting their name and contact info in.  But an email didn't go out to the recommender until the student assigned them to a particular college's application.

 

There is a separate place to put down the name and contact info for the counselor.  This is the one that will generate an email for you with prompts to create a counselor account.

 

What was really useful for me was to create a student account of my own using a separate email address (My student had an address.  I had an address as counselor and I used a third address for the practice student account).  That let me invite myself and ensure that I got the correct email.  There was an options specifically for counselors setting up a practice student account.  I could use the practice account to take the actions my kid needed to take (selecting schools for example) and be able to see what they should be seeing.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

BTW, each year College Wise creates a guide to filling out the Common App for students.  I found it really helpful, even though I had to do some extra work for a homeschool application.  

 

https://store.collegewise.com/our-new-common-app-guide-is-here/

 

One thing that kept catching my oldest son was that he would move from one tab of the application to the other without saving his entries.  This sometimes meant that he would spend an hour inputting info only to have it disappear because he hadn't saved it.  Save often.  Write longer responses (essays, writing supplements, additional comments) in a word processing platform where you can easily spell check your work and do word counts.  Then paste them into the appropriate application blocks.  This also lets you easily use the same responses for CA and for other non-CA applications.