UW-Madison Set To Begin Accepting Common Application

Starting this fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison will join the more than 600 schools that already accept the Common Application, a website that lets students apply to multiple schools simultaneously.

UW student Naveen Rihal applied to six colleges when she was a senior in high school.

“All the applications have you do your name, your year, family background, grades. So filling that out over and over again gets annoying and repetitive,” she said.

Steven Hahn, vice provost of the Division of Enrollment Management, said although the university was hesitant about the Common Application in the past, he believes it will help reach students outside of the university’s traditional recruitment efforts.

“A move to the Common app increases the diversity of your applicant pool in all ways that may be considered,” said Hahn, listing off socioeconomic and geographic diversity as examples.

Students will still be able to use the old UW application to apply to the university. The fee for both the Common Application and the UW system application is set at $50, a $6 increase from prior years.

UW-Madison is the first public university in the state to accept the Common Application.