Common App Data Shows Challenges Students Face at Home

More than 870,000 first-year applicants who used Common App last year reported that they experienced at least one significant home-based responsibility or extenuating life circumstance, such as caregiving, translation or working to help pay family bills. Many of those students, representing about 57 percent of the 1.5 million applicants, clicked several boxes, according to data released by Common App Thursday.

At least 30 percent of all applicants—458,000 students—reported spending at least four hours a week caring for younger siblings or household members; 290,000 students (19 percent) reported providing transportation to family members, and 244,000 (16 percent) said that they regularly help family members with medical appointments, bank visits or visa interviews, the Common App data showed. In addition, at least 152,000 students (10 percent) reported that they commute more than an hour to school each day, 122,000 (8 percent) said they live without stable access to the internet, more than 76,000 students (5 percent) said they’re unhoused and another 76,000 said they live without consistent access to food, water or power.

The findings come from a question Common App added last year as part of an effort to go beyond traditional extracurricular activities like sports, clubs and volunteer work and get a sense of the key responsibilities and life circumstances that take up at least four hours of a student’s week. The information was released as part of a broader update of what Common App is doing to increase the number of students from low-income backgrounds who apply to college.

Natasha Go, a senior product manager at Common App, said the question can help admissions officers get a fuller picture of an applicant’s life, illuminating how they spend their time outside school and how that might affect their grades and ability to participate in traditional extracurricular activities.

“We know that students have complicated lives and sometimes there are complexities that they can’t necessarily express through the activity section,” Go said. “I think the academic records and the activities are important in helping students tell their story, and the responsibilities and circumstances question was a way for them to explain other time commitments that shaped the opportunities that they may or may not have had.”

First-generation and international students were more likely than their peers to report having extenuating responsibilities or challenges. Of the applicants who checked seven or more boxes, 73 percent were first generation and 28 percent were international students.

A spokesperson from Common App declined to provide further disaggregated data but said the organization plans to release a research brief next spring, at which point the question will have been part of the regular application for two full cycles.

“The context of a student’s life matters and is important,” Go said. “Without the context, it’s easy for somebody to make assumptions about how a student is spending their time.”

Before Common App implemented this question, students might have used the application essay or activity section to disclose significant home-based responsibilities and circumstances. By adding the question, Common App seeks to ensure that students share with colleges all they’re doing, and to give them the opportunity to use their essay to write about other things.

The idea for the question came from a group of college admissions researchers in 2021, which was convened by Common App and Making Caring Common, a project of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Trisha Ross Anderson, senior director of higher education and college admission initiatives at Making Caring Common, who was part of that original group, said they shared an understanding that many students weren’t fully reporting the work they do outside of school and extracurricular activities—work she said colleges care about.

“This can shed a lot of light on why they are maybe doing fewer traditional extracurricular activities in school, or maybe why their grades dipped in a particular semester,” Ross Anderson said. “It’s both valuable for colleges to know this information as they think about students as applicants, and also helpful for students who want to represent their commitments and skills to a college.”