The Coalition Application: What’s the Latest News?
With an increasing number of college and universities joining the ranks of the Coalition each week, it’s time for an update on the Coalition Application. If you need a basic primer on what the Coalition Application is, read our previous post: What Is the Coalition Application? Go ahead, we’ll wait. For updates, read on:
- Annie Reznik has been appointed as the first Executive Director of the Coalition. Ms. Reznik is the first full-time “employee” of the Coalition, which until now had been organized and created by volunteers from member schools. Her appointment will likely allow for communication to come from one point of origin rather than from schools across the Coalition.
- Two schools have publicized that they are planning to exclusively use the Coalition Application, starting in fall of 2016 (that’s this fall, guys). While neither of the schools cited in this article (the University of Washington and the University of Maryland) have updated their official application websites with details about using the Coalition App, it’s fair to assume that’s because they’ve only just finished wrapping up the details on last year’s application cycle. We think it’s fair to assume that other schools will also commit to using the Coalition App in exclusivity, but they’ll only share that information as their cycle moves forward and they can focus on next year’s applicants. In other words, there’ll be a lot more about Coalition App exclusivity in the coming months!
- On the other side of the coin, more than a handful of Coalition schools have shared that they will not be using the Coalition’s application this year. The article cited above reports that more than 60 member schools plan to use the new application; but because we know that there are 93 schools currently considered “member” schools, there is reason to believe as many as 30 might not be using the application in its inaugural year. Schools as small as Mount Holyoke College and as big as Michigan State will not be using the Coalition application this year.
- The essay prompts are live. While the prompts are straightforward and mirror the prompts from many other applications (more on that later!), the Coalition clearly states that not all colleges will require students to write an essay. At the same time, they also state that some colleges will require both a response to one of the generic prompts and to a school-specific essay. For that reason, all applicants are encouraged to consult individual application requirements.
- A date has been set for the “Locker” component of the application to go live! And that date is… April 2016! Which is now. We’ve yet to see any updates to the website, but we’ll let you know when we do and provide an update at that time.
