The Common App: Family Section

No one applies to college in a vacuum

The great English poet John Donne wrote that no man is an island. Kathy Sledge sang that we are family. Philip Larkin argued, depressingly, that “they f*** you up, your mum and dad.”

And then there’s the family section of the Common Application—arguably more prosaic, but highly informative nonetheless.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

When I worked as a college counselor, I reminded each student that it was their name on the application and their story to tell, but let me tell you—there were a lot of other names and stories competing for air time. Parents with very definite ideas about the college list. Or extended family members in other states or other countries who were keeping close tabs on where all the cousins were going to college. Or an older sibling, barely old enough to drink, who stood in for the parents because the father wasn’t in the picture and the mother was living in another state for reasons unknown. Or a sibling who had been accepted into a Really Good School the pre…