Common App is the digital equivalent of the DMV—necessary, functional, and nobody's idea of a good time, but it gets the job done.

For the 3+ million students who use it annually to apply to college, it's an essential tool that genuinely simplifies what would otherwise be an administrative nightmare. The mobile app lets students chip away at applications during lunch, on the bus, or wherever they have a spare moment, which is legitimately helpful during the chaos of senior year.

That said, this isn't 'media' in the traditional sense. There's no entertainment value, no creative spark, no fun. It's a digital form. A really important digital form that opens doors to higher education, but still—just a form. Parents of college-bound teens will appreciate how it centralizes the process; everyone else can scroll past.