The College of William & Mary extended its deadline for early decision and spring transfer admissions after reported problems with the Common Application software.
The new deadline is pushed to Nov. 8 instead of today. William & Mary is one of more than 500 colleges that use the latest version of the software, called CA4.
“We understand that applying to college is already a stressful process, and we don’t want technical issues to make the process even more so,” said the college’s admissions blog.
The shortcomings of CA4 are no new thing – it launched with a flop Aug. 1 after months of hype from the company. From there, the business received a deluge of complaints: about the interface, functionality and reliability. One user even complained the system crashed just an hour after the launch.
An Aug. 2 post on the company’s Facebook page shows the Common Application team was quick to apologize.
“Thanks once again for your patience. We have worked hard to resolve lingering issues from our first 24 hours,” the post said.
Since that time, a flood of comments on the company’s timeline show a prospective student body still concerned about the application problems.
The company since fixed many of the bugs and Senior Associate Dean of Admissions Tim Wolfe said that despite the problems, many students were able to submit their applications successfully.
“However, knowing that has not been the case for many others, we felt it was best to provide additional flexibility by extending the deadline,” Wolfe said in a statement.
