The Common App Setup Checklist: What to Have Ready Before You Create Your Account (2026)

Creating a Common App account takes five minutes. Filling it out without stopping to hunt for a counselor's email, a graduation date, or a parent's employer takes preparation. This is the gather-first checklist — everything the form will actually ask for, so you set it up in one sitting.

Before you touch the site: the gather list

Your basics

• Legal name exactly as it appears on school records (mismatches cause transcript-matching headaches later)
• Date of birth, address, phone, and a non-school email you'll still have after graduation — school accounts get deactivated, and colleges email that address for years
• Social Security number if you have one (used for financial aid matching; optional on the form itself)

Your school's details

• School's official name and CEEB code (your counselor has it; it's also searchable in the form)
• Your counselor's full name and email — the form asks early, and this is what triggers transcript and recommendation requests
• Entry and expected graduation dates
• Current-year courses, exactly as named on your schedule

Your testing record

• Every SAT/ACT date and score you might report (you choose later what to send where, but the form asks for the inventory)
• AP/IB exams taken and planned

Your family section

• Parent/guardian legal names, education level, occupation, and employer — this section stalls more first sessions than any other, because most students have to text a parent mid-form
• If parents attended college: institution names and degrees

Your activities raw material

• A rough list of activities with hours per week and weeks per year — the form asks for both numbers for every entry, and estimating them live is how activities get undersold. Ten slots exist; you don't need ten, you need honest numbers for the ones you have.

The 30-minute setup, in order

1. Create the account with your permanent email.
2. Complete Profile → Family → Education in one pass (everything above makes this non-stop).
3. Enter your testing inventory.
4. Invite your counselor (this starts the school-side paperwork clock — do it early, counselors get buried by October).
5. Add a first few colleges to unlock their specific questions — you can change this list freely.
6. Sign the FERPA waiver when it appears (recommenders expect it waived; most counselors advise the same).

What NOT to do on day one

Don't draft essays inside the Common App text boxes — write in a doc, paste later. Don't submit anything. Don't panic at college-specific questions you can't answer yet; they unlock over months, not minutes.

The step before the checklist

The one thing this form can't tell you is whether the colleges you're adding in step 5 are the right ones for your numbers. That's worth knowing before the list hardens: check your list free — it takes about a minute, no account, and shows where your score sits at each school you enter. Then start adding schools with your eyes open.

--- PrepToDone is not affiliated with the Common App. Details reflect the standard first-year application; always confirm requirements with your counselor.