Dive Summary:
- The University of Illinois is developing an in-house online application system for its Urbana-Champaign campus as an alternative to the Common Application Consortium, and it hopes to have the new system up and running for fall 2014 applicants.
- The university's Chicago campus adopted the Common App last year, but for now, UI decided against using it at Urbana-Champaign and Springfield, which has its own online application system.
- The Common App allows students to apply to numerous colleges with a centralized application, but officials say its requirements differ from UI's and would create more paperwork, and a committee estimated that its annual cost of $500,000 outweighed its benefits.
From the article:
A university committee that evaluated the Common App concluded that any potential benefits would be offset by the cost — estimated at more than $500,000 a year — and could disrupt the UI's own recruitment process. The move was also opposed by a majority of counselors at UI "feeder" high schools in suburban Chicago, some of whom wrote to then-UI President Michael Hogan last year to argue against the idea. Hogan had pushed the Common App as part of a sweeping proposal to revamp how the university manages admissions and enrollment. ...