Common App releases new call for research proposals

Today, Common App launched a call for research proposals from the broader social science research community. This new process is meant to mobilize new perspectives, skill sets, expertise, and resources. It aims to enrich our data insights, which we have shared over the last four years.

As part of our commitment to being a leading voice for equity in the college application process and to guide our ambitious moonshot goal to close our equity gap in low- and middle-income students applying for postsecondary opportunities. We have the ability to leverage the unique depth and breadth of our data warehouse on first-year college applicants. The goal of sharing these insights is to help advance our collective understanding of the relationship between students’ high school contexts/communities and college access. 

These proposals should focus on producing, interpreting, and making actionable novel measures of college preparedness, student demographics, academic and extracurricular opportunity, and/or student application behavior that ultimately help Common App and its constituents promote equity in college access – though projects examining other closely related dynamics and questions will still be considered.

Our unique data warehouse represents an enormous, and still largely untapped, resource for this critical research. We’re looking to collaborate with skilled researchers from the broader social science community to accelerate and enhance our work in this arena. 

For more information about the call for proposals process and how to submit a proposal, view our guidelines.