There are 456 colleges that use the Common Application, which is intended to make applying to colleges easier. With the Common App, you fill in information about yourself and your family only once.

If you are applying to lots of schools, it’s convenient to only have to fill in such things your contact information, your coursework, extracurricular activities and your parents’ background one time. Each school, however, inserts its own supplemental questions into the application so applying to each school will take extra effort.