How to explain changing schools on the Common App

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office, the office we learned from, slowed down for one small part of the Common App that most students barely notice: the question of whether anything affected your progression through secondary school. For most applicants the honest answer is no change.

For those who took time off, repeated or skipped a year, switched schools or moved countries, the form opens a short writing box, and many of them fill it in like a customs declaration. Readers there saw a move between continents, or a year away from school, reduced again and again to a single line of fact. That line is the most common mistake in the box, and it is an expensive one.