Georgetown University community members expressed excitement, concern and indifference at the university’s announcement that it will join the Common Application.
Georgetown will enter a three-year pilot program starting in August 2026 — a major departure from the university’s previous strategy of using its own undergraduate admissions application. The university is one of only a few top-ranked colleges not on the Common App, an online college application platform which over 1,100 U.S. colleges and universities use for their undergraduate programs.
Current undergraduates’ reactions to the move were mixed, with some students optimistic that joining the Common App would increase accessibility.
Ethan Henshaw (CAS ’26), the president of the Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA), said the university will reach more potential applicants by shifting to the Common App.
“I think the Common App has a larger reach than just Georgetown’s individual application,” Henshaw told The Hoya. “A lot more students will see it. I think Georgetown, in some ways, advertises most or appeals most to wealthy applicants from certain areas of the country — obviously, there are a lot of Georgetown students from the Northeast — and so I think this will help diversify the applicant pool.”
After the Supreme Court eliminated race-based affirmative action in June 2023, Georgetown enrolled fewer students of color in the Class of 2028, its first post-affirmative action first-year class, than previous classes. While 49% of students enrolled in the Class of 2028 identified as students of color, 53% of students admitted to the Class of 2027 identified as students of color.
Asher Maxwell (CAS ’26), a member of Hoyas Against Legacy Admissions, a student group advocating for the end of legacy admissions at Georgetown, said joining the Common App will make Georgetown more accessible to students from underrepresented backgrounds.
“I think it’s no secret that the opportunity to attend Georgetown overwhelmingly goes to students who come from extraordinarily wealthy backgrounds, and tend to come from communities that are overrepresented at the top echelons of our country,” Maxwell told The Hoya. “I hope that this will help start to turn the tide on that problem and allow for Georgetown to provide opportunities to more students from every background and every zip code in the country.”
Chloe Treanor (MSB ’26), campus tour group Blue and Gray Society’s director of tour guides, said the centralized application process may make applying easier for some students.
“Having all of your fees in one place, and having all of your recommendations come from the same place, that is just easier, I think, for students who maybe don’t know how to navigate the college application process by themselves,” Treanor told The Hoya.
Other students expressed concern that Georgetown would admit applicants without special interest in the university’s unique characteristics.
George LeMieux (CAS ’25), a GUSA senator, said he worries moving to the Common App could attract students who apply to Georgetown because it is easy, not because they deeply care about the university.
“I have quite a few friends who graduated, and now are interviewers, and a lot of the people they get in interviews for Georgetown are like, ‘Well, the reason I want to go here is because it’s the best academic program that I’ve applied to,’” LeMieux told The Hoya. “That’s about it, it’s a very simplistic, ‘This is a good school, therefore I want to go.’ They don’t know a lot about the Jesuit identity of the school. They don’t know a lot about what Georgetown stands for, why Georgetown’s here. It’s a very simplistic transaction.”
“If 45 minutes is preventing you from applying to Georgetown, then I don’t really think you want to go to Georgetown that badly,” LeMieux added.
John DiPierri (SFS ’25), another GUSA senator, said joining the Common App may change the level of student engagement at Georgetown.
“I think you’re going to see a very interesting cultural shift,” DiPierri told The Hoya. “The folks that come to Georgetown are very, very passionate about coming to Georgetown, and they see the school as a way to nurture not only their academic or professional pursuits, but their social ones as well.”
“Compared to other universities, Georgetown students are very unique in how they engage with the university and the world around them, and I think that’s in no small part to the way our application process has worked for many years,” DiPierri added. “Once we start changing it, we become not special, we become like every other school.”
Erik Olmen (MSB ’27), a tour coordinator for Blue and Gray, said he worries that the Common App’s simplified application process may increase the number of applications, possibly limiting the number of applicants receiving interviews from graduates.
“Now that they’re switching to the Common App, the number of applicants is going to go way higher, and alumni interviewers are already stretched thin with who they can give interviews to, so I worry that they won’t be able to give that personal experience to all the applicants,” Olmen told The Hoya.
“I was convinced of Georgetown partly because of my alumni interview. She talked to me about the traditions, the community, what being in Washington, D.C., was like, and that’s something that the schools that were on the Common App that I applied to, none of the other ones had,” Olmen added.
About 26,800 students applied to Georgetown for the fall 2024 application cycle, with about 12% of applicants being accepted. In its 2025 ranking of U.S. colleges and universities, U.S. News & World Report ranked Georgetown 24th.
Raghav Akula (SFS ’27) attributed this relatively low ranking to Georgetown’s acceptance rate — 12% for the Class of 2029, significantly higher than second-ranked Yale University’s 4.59%. He said he thinks joining the Common App will lower Georgetown’s acceptance rate as the number of applications grows, possibly increasing its ranking.
“Numerically, it helps with their admission statistics,” Akhula told The Hoya. “I personally do not like the U.S. News rankings and all that stuff, I think that’s a lot of B.S., but a lot of funding, research funding in particular, might be based off of how people perceive those colleges to be ranked, because it may be indicative of that college’s prestige. So I think it would be better for Georgetown’s statistics that get reported to some of these ranking agencies to help boost Georgetown’s overall ranking and prestige, so that it gets more attention, it gets more resources.”
LeMieux said the university should prioritize seeking the most qualified applicants.
“Georgetown should go for quality of students and not quantity of students,” LeMieux said. “I don’t think this decision makes it substantially more accessible. Again, I think you’ll see the acceptance rate go down and maybe executives will think that’s a good thing, but at the end of the day I don’t think it’s anything material.”