The
last few days have comprised the most difficult period in The Common
Application's nearly 40 years of service to the education community. You
have no
doubt read news stories and social media conversations about the
challenges facing applicants, recommenders, and member colleges. As an
organization, we have been too slow to respond. That ends today. We have
written this communication to highlight three
core values of our mission, explain how we have fallen short in
realizing them, and provide details about how we pledge to do better.
Reliability.
For many users, the new Common Application has not been a
reliable service. We have tried to be transparent in other
communications regarding the various issues users have experienced since
the August 1
launch. Many have been solved for all users, and others have been
solved for most users. Nonetheless, individual
applicants and recommenders are still encountering problems related to
account logins, application submission, and document uploads. In some
instances, our support team can easily solve these problems for users
who contact us through the Help Center. In others,
we continue to research patterns among the individuals affected to
ascertain where the root cause lies. Further details about support
volume and response efforts appear below.
Beginning
next week, we will be using our School Officials newsletter list to
send daily updates to the counseling community, and we encourage you to
subscribe if you have not already done so. Counselors, we ask for
your help in sharing these updates with your students and families. As
much as we would like to communicate this same information directly to
applicants, messaging 800,000 registered users
would create too big a strain on the system, exacerbating the very
problems we are trying to solve.
Our
member colleges have faced similar disruptions in reliability, which
have adversely impacted their internal processes. Members rely on us for
the transmission
of the documents and data needed to evaluate candidates, and each
college has its own unique process and needs. We are in constant
communication with these colleges to ensure they are prepared to receive
and process applications and school forms, and we are
confident that members will be able to do so successfully as major
deadlines approach. To help you understand the complete landscape, we
want to reinforce the following points:
-
Students are successfully submitting applications in record numbers.
-
Counselors and teachers using the Common App Recommender System are successfully submitting all school forms.
-
Counselors
and teachers using Naviance are successfully submitting School Reports,
Teacher Evaluations, and Early Decision Agreements. Implementation of
Fee Waiver forms and Optional Reports is imminent for this
group.
-
Final integration for Parchment users is imminent.
-
All
member colleges have access to every single application document that
has been submitted to them, though some are not yet able to import
application data into their internal information systems, which is a
critical processing step.
By
highlighting these successful processes, we do not wish to minimize the
challenges and frustrations of individual users and colleges, nor do we
wish to
paint a picture of a flawless system. Rather, we hope to convey in a
responsible manner how the Common Application is functioning for the
majority of users.
Service.
Our online Help Center for applicants and recommenders has been
operating 24/7 since October 1. Historically, our average response time
has been well under one hour. In the past few weeks, our response time
for many users has exceeded this average by an unacceptable level. This
increase is due to the complexity of some
of the issues mentioned above. The time-intensive research required to
investigate certain payment and login problems has created a backlog
that has extended to all users seeking assistance.
In
the past 48 hours, we have released fixes that have resolved two of our
most complex issues involving payment and the Chrome browser. The
payment problem
required intense collaboration with our third-party vendor. The
browser challenges, which resulted from the unexpected release of a new
version, prompted immediate collaboration with Chrome support. The
solutions we implemented to address these issues resulted
in a steep and immediate decline in new support requests. From Tuesday
to Wednesday, applicant requests declined 73%, and recommender requests
declined 43%. Also, prior to the payment fix, we were researching and
reconciling thousands of payment records on
a daily basis. On Thursday,
that number was 6. This significant progress will assist us in
addressing the backlog and return us to a more normal response time.
Many
applicants, parents, counselors, and teachers continue to call for
phone support, and we understand why. Speaking directly to a support
representative
is an assurance that one's problems and frustrations are being heard
and addressed. Unfortunately, given the volume of users who interact
with our system, phone support would immediately become unsustainable.
In addition, the system information that is transmitted
when a user submits a request through our Help Center is often critical
in helping us identify and solve the problem.
We
assure you that every message submitted through our Help Center is
evaluated by an individual member of our support team. These
professionals work diligently
to provide the most accurate and efficient assistance possible. There
are times when the complexity of issues prevents them from responding as
quickly as they or you would like, but they strive to provide the
timeliest responses possible.
Accuracy
is also a central component of service. To that end, our member
services team will work closely with any colleges who wish to adjust
their deadlines
to ensure that the new dates are reflected within our system.
Integrity.
If we lose sight of this value, the others cease to matter.
Despite all the challenges we have faced, we have not forgotten the
principles that guide us, even as we have struggled to attain them. We
are unshakably committed to the mission of this association, and we
pledge transparency and diligence as we work to fulfill
it.
Many
of you have grown weary of our continued pleas for patience and our
assurances that we are working as quickly as we can to resolve
outstanding issues.
Your requests for precise timelines are understandable, and we would
provide such details if we could. To do so, however, would be to make
commitments that we might not be able to honor. With that in mind, we
pledge to communicate as openly as possible regarding
the challenges we face and our progress in addressing them. Moving
forward, should we observe a widespread problem, we will inform you
immediately using social media, even if the only information we can
provide is an acknowledgement of the issue and a promise
to share updates as they become available. For those of you who do not
regularly follow social media, you can view our live
Facebook and
Twitter feeds directly on our website.
All
of us who work with and for The Common Application--from the Board of
Directors to the staff to our technology partners at Hobsons--understand
the significance
of this moment, both for the college application process and for the
reputation of the association itself. To those of you who have offered
words of support and encouragement, we thank you. To those of you who
have lost faith in our ability to adequately meet
the needs of you and your students, we understand. We need to regain
your trust, and we know that the burden is on us to make that happen. We
are confident that we will.
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