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Sending Documents to Common App: How It Works

Brad B Updated by Brad B

If your school is integrated with Common App, when you send a Common App document from Scoir — transcripts, School Reports, evaluations, recommendations — it routes to Common App, not directly to colleges. Common App holds it until the student submits their application, then makes it available to every college they’ve applied to (or later apply to). Understanding that flow explains almost everything below.

The rules of the road

  • One-and-done. For Common App applications, each document is sent once per student — it then becomes available to all of the student’s Common App colleges, regardless of their individual requirements. Send a Midyear Report for one CA college and every CA college the student applies to can download it. The exceptions: ED agreements, teacher recommendations (which go only to the specific colleges they’re assigned to), and Final Reports.
  • Real-time sending. Common App documents send the moment you click Send (no nightly batching like non–Common App deliveries) — but they’re only released to colleges once the student submits their application. Processing can slow during high-volume periods on Common App’s side; if a document sits in Pending for several hours, contact Scoir support so we can investigate.
  • Colleges added later are covered automatically. If a student adds more Common App colleges after you’ve sent documents, Common App matches and delivers the previously submitted documents to the new colleges — no resending needed.
  • The student doesn’t need to have submitted for you to send. Sending early is fine; Common App simply holds the documents until submission.
  • 2MB limit. All PDF documents sent to Common App must be under 2MB — this applies to every document type, not just school profiles.
  • The cycle boundary is real. During Common App's late-July system refresh, integration sending is disabled entirely — and once the new cycle opens, documents can no longer be sent through the integration for students from the previous cycle. Their documents go through traditional Scoir sending instead.

Materials Common App accepts

Teacher Evaluations · Counselor Recommendations · School Reports · Midyear Reports · Final Reports · Optional Reports · Fee Waivers · Early Decision Agreements. When creating a School Report, you’ll be prompted to indicate which transcripts to submit with it — up to four: the initial transcript is required, and additional or transfer transcripts can be included.

Before you can send

Documents can go to Common App only after the student has:

  1. Connected their Scoir and Common App accounts (see Students: Connecting Common App & Scoir)
  2. Signed the FERPA Release Authorization in Common App
  3. Indicated a start term and admission plan for each college they’re applying to

Your roster’s CA Connection and CA FERPA columns show who’s ready at a glance. If a student insists they’ve done these but you’re still blocked, see Troubleshooting FERPA Status in Scoir — a status mismatch is the usual cause.

How to send

Send for an individual student from their profile under Colleges & Applications → Send Documents, or in bulk from Applications → Send. Step-by-step guides: For Counselors: Sending application documents for individual students and For Counselors: Bulk Sending Application Documents.

Sending teacher recommendations

Unlike counselor forms, teacher recommendations can be sent to one Common App college at a time. Any other colleges that recommendation is assigned to stay in a ready-to-send state until you send them.

  • One-and-done still applies. A teacher submits one letter that covers all of a student's Common App colleges. Sending individually controls
    each college receives that letter, not how many letters get submitted.
  • Common App preview. Sending to the first Common App college unlocks the preview for that recommendation.
Auto-send: For high schools configured with Auto-send teacher recommendations:Enabled, teacher recommendations now send automatically as soon as a recommendation is assigned and completed by the teacher. Auto-send no longer waits for a counselor document, like the School Report or Initial Transcript, to go out first for Common App applications.

Tracking what happened after you clicked Send

Two date fields on the student’s Send Documents page tell the story:

  • Last Sent — when the document went from Scoir to Common App.
  • Last Delivered — when a specific college retrieved it from Common App. This only appears after the student submits their application.

A blank Last Delivered isn’t an error: it usually means the student hasn’t submitted yet, or the college hasn’t received the specific document(s) yet. Worth knowing, though: Common App gives colleges flexibility in how they retrieve documents, so Scoir can't confirm how or when a given college receives a file. For questions about delivery itself, contact the college directly.

Fixing mistakes

Unsubmitting. From the student’s Send Documents page, you can unsubmit a document only if no Common App college has downloaded it yet (i.e., Last Delivered is blank). Unsubmitting removes it from all of the student’s Common App colleges; you can then edit or replace it and resend. Two exceptions: Fee Waivers and Early Decision Agreements cannot be unsubmitted once sent.

After a college has downloaded. Per Common App, a downloaded form can't be updated or replaced in their system. Your options: contact the college directly for guidance on providing a corrected document, or use an Optional Report in Scoir to submit updated grades, transcripts, or corrections to a previously submitted recommendation.

Two limits apply to Optional Reports: Common App allows a maximum of two per student, and neither can be sent until the initial School Report has gone out. Two is the ceiling for the entire application season — spend them wisely.

Sending documents a college didn’t ask for

Want to send something not specifically required — a counselor evaluation, a midyear report a college accepts but doesn’t demand? From the student’s Send Documents page, click Add Documents. If at least one CA college requires the document, adding it includes it in all of the student’s Common App packets; if none require it, add it to any one college and it applies to all. Remember the scope: for Common App colleges, adding, removing, or sending these documents applies to all of the student’s CA colleges — and teacher recommendations always respect each college’s limits, with no extras beyond what a college allows.

If a college’s application method changes

Changing a college’s application method reroutes document delivery and stops that college’s sync — sent documents un-mark before submission, and requirements switch to Scoir’s delivery. It’s reversible, but it’s a deliberate decision with its own considerations: see Changing a College’s Application Method for what happens and when it’s the right move.

How did we do?

Getting Your School Ready for the Common App Integration

Managing Fee Waivers for Common App

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