By Rajkamal Rao
 |
| Image Credit: Rao Advisors LLC. |
The
University of Texas will continue to accept the Common App (along with
ApplyTexas).
Many parents ask our help to assist their teenagers in filling out college applications - primarily the Common App.
You generally need our help to complete the form for only one college. We will record the Zoom call and let you refer to the recording for the other universities on your list. We require the presence of at least one parent throughout the call, with no exceptions.
Before we get on the call, several preparatory steps must be completed.
1. We should be in WhatsApp communication with your
teenager through a group. The group name should follow the format
2026_JohnStudent, assuming a 2026 graduating class.
2. We should have completed your long-form resume review.
3. You should already have completed the formalities to
have your high school transcript sent to the college under consideration. Every
school follows a different process - but, this post should provide you with some
guidance.
4. You should have already sent your SAT/ACT scores
to the college unless you want to exercise the test-optional feature.
Self-reporting SAT scores on the Common App is entirely different from sending
official scores from the College Board.
5. Filling out the Common App. The Common App has two parts to it. The common section - including static information like name, address, contact information, social security number or Tax Identification number, information about the high school, the self-reporting of the SAT scores - is common for all colleges. We ask that you fill out as much information here as you can.
It would help if you filled out the FERPA section on
the Common App to request that recommendation letter links be sent to your
recommenders. For this step, you would need the recommender's name,
title, and email address (this also applies to school counselor
recommendations). Your teenager must have keyed each item from the
reviewed long-form resume (in step 2 above) into the Common App Activity
Section. (See note below).
The second part of the Common App is the college-specific information (such as first and second-choice major, start term, and supplemental essay responses). Here also, try to fill out as much information as you can. For some schools, such as Texas A&M, you will be asked to self-report your high school grades (SRAR). This task can take up to two hours - so we recommend that a parent assist the student in accurately making the clerical entries.
The SRAR is a crucial step in college admissions and a university will not consider your application until it is complete. Because of the manual nature of the data entry process, we will not review the SRAR, relying on the parents to validate that this important step has been accurately completed.
The Common App Activity section: The Common App Activity Section
severely limits the expression of each activity to an 80-character title and a
150-character description. The best way to deal with this limitation is to copy
and paste our reviewed long-form resume content into ChatGPT and explicitly ask
it to compress it to the desired character length for both title and body.
ChatGPT is excellent at this kind of thing.
Sometimes, ChatGPT exceeds the character
length - at which time you can gently rebuke it and have fun. "I said 150
characters!" The output is generally good, but as with all things ChatGPT, you need
to review that it makes sense and doesn't take away from the original resume
(at least the salient points). Completing the activity section takes time -
sometimes an hour - so please have this section complete before the call.
Prioritizing items in the Common App Activity section: Before we suggest how you should list your accomplishments, remember what you should not do: Don’t list chronologically because admissions officers aren’t tracking a timeline. Don’t bury your strongest activities at the bottom. And avoid filler items just to hit 10 slots, as quality is always preferred to quantity.
The best way is to list what is the most impactful first. The Common App explicitly instructs students to list activities "in order of importance to them." Here is our guide of how you should prioritize your list.
- Leadership. List activities that demonstrate leadership first. This could be club officer positions, examples when you initiated projects, participated in UIL competitions such as debates, or made a measurable impact to your community.
- Depth of involvement and time commitment. Any activity about which you are passionate reflects in your time commitment to that activity. List all activities where your sustained effort is over multiple years, logging multiple hours a week.
- Relevance to intended major or career. Any activity that aligns with your academic or career interests deserves to appear higher up in your list. If you are a Computer Science major, you would list hackathons or coding competitions.
- Activities which distinguish you. If you have done something unique, such as founded a nonprofit, published research, or built an app, you want to highlight it. Depending upon the impact, this could go even to the leadership bucket.
- Essay relevance. If your Common App essay refers to an activity, that activity should appear high up on your activity list. This will help reinforce the narrative that the activity was fundamental to your growth.
A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical and free advice via this website. But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.
Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee. Please contact us for more information.
