Leveraging the power of innovative technology, The Common Application has created a new transfer application experience for students who may be returning to school through nontraditional pipelines.
The new experience simplifies the admissions process for transfer or other nontraditional students by offering a dynamic and tailored application for a student’s unique background. It also provides institutions with an opportunity to reframe admissions application processes, which largely have been oriented to the traditional first-year population of students entering from high school.
“Providing equity of experience using the Common App to our transfer population, currently 44% of whom are the first in their families to attend college, is key to our mission of promoting access,” said Jenny Rickard, president and CEO of The Common Application. “We’re wanting to be able to make those connections between students seeking to transfer or return to education, to try to really streamline that process for them.”
The Common App built its new transfer application in collaboration with Liaison International, a leading graduate and professional admissions solution provider. Officials developed the transfer application after convening a Transfer Advisory Committee and after hearing concerns about barriers and challenges that transfer students faced in the admissions process.
Studies show that nearly 40 percent of students transfer at least once throughout their post-secondary matriculation, with the greatest number of students transferring in from two-year public institutions. The Transfer Advisory Committee is composed of individuals from 29 two- and four-year institutions who are knowledgeable about the needs of students transferring from traditional educational settings, military service or from the workforce.
Common App institutional members “sometimes have a challenge trying to find out, ‘Well, who wants to transfer?’” Rickard said. “They know [students come from] high school to college – but from either community college to college, or college to college, or from work to coming back to study, that has been a challenge for institutions.”
Transfer Advisory Committee member Margaret K. Omwenga, the registrar at Prince George’s Community College, has been working with community college and transfer students for many years. The Common App’s new transfer application will be beneficial to students who have gaps in educational experience because “life happened,” she said.
