Freshmen classes in years to come may have an easier time to applying to NC State than you did, thanks to a new college admissions system NC State is implementing this year. 

In an attempt to streamline the college application process and make it more accessible to a more diverse group of high school students, NC State joined the more than 80 colleges and universities in the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, which includes a standardized application as well as college-planning resources available to students throughout their high school careers.

The key reason NC State joined the Coalition is for its emphasis on access and outreach, which Thomas Griffin, the director of undergraduate admissions, said is of the highest priority to NC State and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

High School freshmen, sophomores and juniors will be able to begin using the online tools that the Coalition will provide starting early in 2016, although specific dates vary.

The college application process can be overwhelming and frustrating for many high school students, including Bradley Caison, a freshman studying fashion and textile management.

“My biggest problem with applying for college was that I got super frustrated juggling applying for schools that did have Common App and those that didn’t,” Caison said. “It got to a point where if [the school] wasn’t using Common App, I wasn’t even interested in applying because of how overwhelming it was.”

The Coalition aims to alleviate such confusion by providing a free online platform that will help students begin planning for college as early as their freshman year in high school. It will also aid current seniors in high school starting to apply for college in 2016 by giving them a centralized environment for students to receive information from whichever Coalition schools they would like to learn more about, as well as provide basic advice about the admissions process in general.

According to Griffin, the Coalition developed an online tool that gives students advice about applying to college and allows them to keep track of their progress over time through high school.

“Many of the schools in North Carolina have a student-to-counselor ratio of 400 to one, so to expect them to give great advice to all of those students on top of all the other issues they deal with seems unreasonable,” Griffin said.

The Coalition will also aim to assist underrepresented and first-generation students who may feel that college isn’t for them.

Research suggests that many students who come from low-income households or are first-generation college students aren’t as comfortable with process of applying for college. More specifically, these students tend to have a harder time navigating the financial aid and scholarship application process and, as a result, do not receive the financial help they would otherwise be entitled to receive. 

“What’s exciting about the Coalition is not that it’s another application … it’s the idea of getting information out to students who maybe don’t have great college counseling or don’t have great resources,” Griffin said. 

Along with NC State, more than 80 public and private schools have joined the Coalition, including all the Ivy Leagues, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, The College of William and Mary, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University.

The online platform will be designed to allow students to build their personal portfolios of their various interests and extracurricular activities, writing samples and recommendation letters. 

The various tools available via the Coalition’s online platform to students include a college locker, a collaboration platform and the Coalition Application itself.

The college locker allows students to store various files such as writing, classwork, personal thoughts or other personal documents. It is a confidential, private space for students to organize and collect their thoughts and college information, as the locker will be viewable only by the student. 

Students are free to share items from the locker with teachers, advisors and whoever else they might want to review their work, and students will be able to share any documents they choose with their prospective colleges when the time for application comes.

According to Griffin, the advantage of using the Coalition’s tools and its application over using Common App is that Common App “doesn’t currently have the advising tools that the Coalition plans to offer; the Common App is simply an application.”