The Common Application may be required by Brown for hopefuls applying to the class of 2013.
"We are strongly considering the possibility of adopting the Common App," said Dean of Admission Jim Miller '73. The final decision will be made by the admissions staff within the next month after working out some "bureaucratic, administrative issues," he said.
If the Common Application is adopted, it will be the sole means of applying, but Brown will still require additional essays and supplemental forms, including those for the Program in Liberal Medical Education and the Brown-Rhode Island School of Design dual degree program, Miller said.
Though Brown's application used to be distinct because it required students to write personal essays by hand, 95 percent of students now complete the application electronically and submit it online. By accepting the Common Application, which has "enormous overlaps" with Brown's current application, the University will make applying easier because the Common Application is used by more than 300 other schools and students using it will no longer need to separately submit similar portions of their application on a Brown-specific form, Miller said.
Using the Common Application could also benefit the University in the future by allowing it to accept transcripts and teacher recommendations online, Miller said.
Angelika Garcia '10 said she does not think changing the application will impact the admissions process. "In the end, it wouldn't really matter because the admissions people choose people who would love to be at Brown," she said.
Since supplemental materials would cover the parts of the current Brown application that are not included on the Common Application, students would probably spend the same amount of time applying, said Jane Zhang '10, chair of the Admissions and Student Services Committee for the Undergraduate Council of Students.
"I don't think (using the Common Application would be) a bad thing, but I don't think it's a good thing," because the majority of time spent writing an application is on the school-specific materials, she said.
