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Getting Your School Ready for the Common App Integration

Brad B Updated by Brad B

A handful of setup steps will streamline document preparation and delivery — and prevent the most common issues once application season is underway. Some tasks belong to your account administrator, others to counselors and teachers. Work through them before students begin connecting accounts on August 1.

Account administrator checklist

☑️ Review Midyear & Final Report/Transcript settings. The application-status triggers you configure in Scoir (e.g., send midyear reports to Pending/Deferred/Waitlisted) apply only to non–Common App applications. For Common App applications, midyear and report requirements are determined by the colleges themselves — and because of Common App’s one-and-done policy, once you send a report for one of a student’s Common App applications, that document becomes available to all their Common App colleges.

☑️ Review Letters of Recommendation settings. Three decisions:

  • Can students request recommendations? If enabled, students request and assign recs themselves; if disabled, counselors handle both.
  • Can students request college-specific recommendations? If enabled, best reserved for non–Common App colleges: Common App allows one recommendation per teacher across all of a student’s colleges, so multiple college-specific letters from one teacher can’t all be used. General recommendations assignable across multiple schools avoid the confusion.
  • Should recommendations auto-send once assigned? If enabled, recommendations send automatically when assigned to a college; if disabled, counselors control when they’re sent.

☑️ Upload your school profile (optional). If your school uses one, upload it in School Settings → Documents & Templates before creating any reports — it then attaches automatically to School Reports. Profiles larger than 2MB cannot be sent to Common App colleges.

☑️ Set up the Secondary School Report template — required. The School Report is required for every Common App application and generates from your school’s template in Scoir. Configuring the template is a required step for participating in the integration; complete all non-optional fields. Doing it in advance means only student-specific details remain when you’re preparing actual reports.

☑️ Bulk upload transcripts & senior courses. Initial, midyear, final, additional, and transfer transcripts plus senior course files are required for (or attachable to) School, Midyear, and Final Reports. Uploading in bulk before the season prevents delays during form prep — and double-check the right files land on the right students during import.

Counselor checklist

☑️ Agree to the integration terms & complete your profile. At first login after opting in to use the integration, counselors are prompted to accept the integration Terms of Service and fill any missing required profile fields (name, title, phone) before proceeding in Scoir.

☑️ Assign counselors to all seniors — before August 1. Students cannot complete the Scoir ↔︎ Common App connection without an assigned counselor; they’ll see a message directing them to contact counseling staff. Confirm every senior has a counselor assigned before students begin connecting.

☑️ Prepare to support student account connections. Familiarize yourself with the process students must complete to connect their Common App and & Scoir accounts, detailed in Students: Connecting Common App & Scoir.

Teacher checklist

☑️ Complete profile information & set a ratings preference. At login, teachers fill any missing required profile fields and choose whether to include student ratings in their recommendations (if yes, 16 ratings fields per recommendation; if no, ratings don’t appear). Both can be changed later under Personal Profile.

☝️ Changing the ratings preference has consequences worth knowing: a teacher who completed recommendations without ratings and then opts in must replace the existing unsent recommendations — otherwise they submit with every rating marked No Basis. In the other direction, turning ratings off before sending drops them; ratings already sent stay sent.

Tracking student readiness

Once students start connecting (August 1 onward), your roster shows the columns CA Connection and CA FERPA, with filters under Common App Status → Account Connection Status and FERPA Release Authorization Status. Both must be complete before you can prepare and submit a student’s forms — filtering for students missing either gives you your chase list through August–September. Point students to Students: Connecting Common App & Scoir for their side of the setup.

How did we do?

Common App in Scoir: Start Here for Counselors

Sending Documents to Common App: How It Works

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