Georgetown Application

The Georgetown application needs an update. Big time.

We love it when colleges make like Robert Frost and take the proverbial road less traveled. We love it when colleges defy the trend of accepting the Common Application. After all, colleges are concerned with their “US News & World Report” rankings (and believe no college that tells you otherwise!). So when a college doesn’t accept the most commonly used application platform, the Common Application, it tells you the school — in this case Georgetown — isn’t doing everything in its power to get everybody (including unqualified students and students not all that interested in actually matriculating) to apply.

Georgetown, we love that you have your own unique application. But can you complete an update? Can you maybe hire a computer science major to make it more user-friendly? We know you can do it, we do!

It’s rather admirable of Georgetown — just as it’s admirable of the University of Chicago to ask students to complete so many unique admissions essays (that doesn’t exactly encourage students with no interest in actually matriculating to UChicago to apply). We love schools that defy trends in college admissions on principle. But there’s a but. Georgetown, your application needs to be revamped. While it likely wasn’t created at the dawn of the Internet age, it has the look and feel of an application created in 1992. Oh, wait…was that before we dialed into AOL? Whoops. “Welcome. You’ve got mail!”

Georgetown, let’s make the application more user-friendly. Our students regularly encounter bugs in your application. Sometimes, things don’t save as students move from one page to another. It’s entirely frustrating and in an already stressful process, it doesn’t need to be. So, Georgetown, keep requiring students complete your own application. Keep taking that road less traveled in defiance of longstanding college admissions trends. Just hire a programmer (or six) to update your application because it doesn’t have to be so complicated. “You’ve got mail.” We don’t know why we threw that in there. It just felt right.