Yesterday at 8:12 pm, nearly four hours ahead of schedule the 2012-2013 Common Application was available online.

Within 30 minutes, 300 individuals had registered an account. The first registration came from Plano, TX, less than one minute after the site went live.

There are now 488 Common Application members in 46 states and the District of Columbia, as well as in France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. They represent an enormously diverse variety of institutions: small and large, public and private, coed and single-sex, highly selective and relatively open enrollment.  Click here to see if the colleges you are interested in are on the list.

These are the Common App essay instructions and prompts for freshman applicants:

Please write an essay of 250-500 words on a topic of your choice or on one of the options listed below, and attach it to your application before submission. Please indicate your topic by checking the appropriate box. This personal essay helps us become acquainted with you as a person and student, apart from courses, grades, test scores, and other objective data. It will also demonstrate your ability to organize your thoughts and express yourself. NOTE: Your Common Application essay should be the same for all colleges. Do not customize it in any way for individual colleges. Colleges that want customized essay responses will ask for them on a supplement form.

* Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

* Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.

* Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.

* Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music or science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.

* A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

* Topic of your choice.