In the wake of Early Decision and Early Action deadlines for college applications, the Common Application’s technical difficulties on Oct. 30 caused panic among seniors nationwide, including at HHS.

On the night of Oct. 30, due to the volume of students accessing the application platform, applicants attempting to log into the Common Application experienced a 504 error and were unable to access their applicant portals.

At 8:38 pm, the Common Application posted the following update on Twitter:

“We are aware that many applicants and recommenders are having technical difficulties this evening and have been working to determine the cause of the problems. In order to minimize the intermittent nature of these difficulties and to fix them, we have decided to take the Common App offline for two hours.

The Common App system will be offline from 11:30pm – 1:30am EDT this evening.

We know that this is a stressful time for students, recommenders, and their families. We are working hard to resolve the technical difficulties as quickly and completely as possible.

We will post our next update at 1:30am EDT.”

As he was completing his Early Decision application to Cornell University, Ethan Rosenthal, senior, expressed disappointment with the Common Application’s lack of reliability.

“They’re getting paid to run the application service; the least they can do is make sure it’s available for students in this stressful time where the server overload could affect the next four years of people’s lives,” Rosenthal said. “Now some people might not be able to log on and see the prompts for their essays that they need to write before tomorrow.”

At 11:03 pm, the Common Application apologized for any inconveniences caused and announced via Twitter that the application system was back online and that the organization contacted all member schools about the technical difficulties.

According to the Common Application, applicants still experiencing problems should contact the system’s Solutions Center team at [email protected].