Will the Common App Crash on Deadline Night?

Portal crashes on deadline night are rare. When they do happen, colleges extend deadlines. The bigger risk is rushing your application and submitting lower-quality work out of fear.

Yes, application portals have failed. But the documented failures are rare enough to make headlines:

Common App's 2013 breakdown was the most severe on record. Platform glitches during a major transition year led 43 colleges to extend deadlines. That was over a decade ago.

UC had two deadline-adjacent disruptions:

• November 2020: A three-hour outage the day before the Nov. 30 deadline. UC extended the deadline by four days.

• November 2021: Connection issues near deadline. UC extended again and told students not to panic about payment processing.

Notice the pattern? When portals fail, institutions respond with extensions. The "11:59 p.m. crash ruins everything forever" scenario doesn't match reality.

What's the actual risk in 2026?

Without complete public incident logs, we can't give you a precise percentage. But we can give you context:

• Within 3 days of deadline: Very low risk for both systems

• Within 24 hours: Very low (Common App), low (UC)

• Final hour: Low for both, though slowdowns are more likely than full outages

Modern web infrastructure is built for high traffic. Both Common App and UC handle millions of applications. These aren't small websites that tip over when they get busy.

The real problem: premature submission under pressure

Here's what we do know from research:

Revision improves writing quality. Studies on adolescent writing instruction consistently show that planning, revising, and editing have strong positive effects. When parents push "just submit it now," revision time gets cut first, and that's the highest-value part of the writing process.

Time pressure degrades performance. Research shows perceived time pressure affects executive function, making it harder to catch errors. College applications are detail-heavy: dates, names, test policies, attachments, confirmations. Rushed students make more mistakes.

Parental pressure amplifies stress. Studies of adolescents in competitive academic contexts link high perceived parental pressure with increased anxiety. When "submit early" becomes a family battle, it makes things worse, not better.

Late-night deadline crunches mean sleep loss. Adolescent sleep deprivation is associated with reduced cognitive control and poorer decision-making, exactly what you don't want when submitting something this important.

For parents and counselors: The better message isn't "submit early before it crashes." It's "submit when it's ready.”

If you have any anxieties concerning the college admissions process, schedule a free consultation with an admissions expert today who can directly address the source of your concerns.