How To Change Ferpa Waiver On Common App

Students must be careful and follow directions closely when linking Cialfo and Common App. Linking the wrong/second account happens when a student already has a Common App account and does not enter that email address into the Recommendations section of Cialfo.

It is possible a student just overlooked completing the FERPA in Common App. Search for these scenarios in your account by going to cDocs > Documents and sorting the FERPA status to find CA linked - FERPA unanswered .

Or in the student's Common App tab. Account Status & FERPA Status.

Step #1 - Ask the student to check the Education section of their Common App and make sure the correct school name and CEEB code is listed.

Step #2 - Ask the student to check their Common App and make sure they completed the FERPA.

If the student has not answered the FERPA, ask them to do so. It should update within 4 hours in Cialfo.

If the student has completed the FERPA, but Cialfo still shows the FERPA as unanswered, verify that the student's Common App email and CAID match what is listed in the Recommendations section of the student's Cialfo account. If the email and CAID do not match, the student has linked a second or wrong Common App account.

The solution:Students will need to use the Common App account linked in Cialfo to apply to Common App colleges. If for some reason cannot use that account AND documents have not been sent through Cialfo, the student should contact Cialfo to see if unlinking their Common App account in Cialfo is possible. The student should provide the following information:

School
Student Full Name
CA ID Linked in Cialfo
CA Email linked in Cialfo

This may be due to 2 reasons:

The student had previously linked their Cialfo and Common App account before this year's application cycle starting in August. This could be your kids who are reapplying this year as well as kids who have transferred from one Cialfo school to another and have linked their accounts previously.
Common App forms were prepared for these students before this year's application cycle.

To allow students to link their accounts, follow the steps below:

Step #1 - On cDocs, find the student that cannot see the "Link Account" button. For students you may have deactivated, be sure to reactivate them first!

Step #2 - Click the student - you should see an orange heading with the button "Enable Sending".

Note: Clicking "Enable Sending" will do the following:

Reset the student's linking status
Remove previously prepared Common App forms
Reset all previously sent documents' statuses (including Parchment and Mail)

If you need to keep track of the previously sent forms and statuses, please use the Download Bundle option and take a screenshot of the previously sent documents' statuses. The resetting of these information is needed to ensure that the student is part of the current application cycle and will be treated as such by Common App accepting universities and colleges.

This might be happening because a student may have invited the teacher to complete a recommendation directly through Common App. Students should not be able to do that if they have added the correct high school to their Education section (the school name and CEEB code need to be correct).

Avoid sending any documents from this teacher until this is resolved. First, verify that the teacher has completed a Common App form in Cialfo. Second, if the teacher has and they still show as unlinked, it is likely that this teacher has been invited directly in Common App as a recommender thus blocking sending in Cialfo. There are two options for resolving this:

Option 1 - Have the student log onto their Common App account and go to the My Colleges Tab. For each college, verify that the teacher has not been invited. If the teacher has been invited, have the student remove the recommender. This should resolve the issue and enable sending.

Option 2 - You will need to contact Common App and ask that the teacher recommender email ID is removed from their system. Do this by going to Common App Recommender Support and clicking on "Contact Support". Explain what has happened and ask that Common App remove the teacher or counselor email ID from their recommender system. If this is not resolved, an error message will appear when trying to send and documents will not be able to be sent.

New User Experience (UX)

Previous User Experience (UX)

(ex: John Smith is showing as John Mason on the student's CA Recommender section)

The recommendation is processed and sent directly to the university. This name issue does not prevent sending. But the name change has something to do with the Common App database. Rest assured that the recommendation has been delivered. The student is able to contact Common App however, and highlight the name issue.

The good news, the letter really was submitted! However, this scenario happened because a counselor sent Common App documents before a student had the college in their Common App My Colleges list. The recommendation will continue to show as "not submitted" on Common App for the student until the student submits the application. Once the student submits the application, the status should change to submitted.

Notice in this image below, the counselor can identify that the college has not yet been added to the student's My Colleges List in Common App by going to the submission sidebar for the student in Cialfo.

This is not really an issue but somethings counselors should be aware off. For transfer students, via cDocs you can only send documents for their parchment accepting applications. For Common App universities, the students would have to invite recommenders directly via Common App and the recommenders would have to submit the documents on Common App. The Common App and Cialfo integration does not support document sending for transfer students. However, do note that transfer students should not invite the recommender's email id that is being used in Cialfo. This would block the recommender from sending documents via Cialfo for other students. Counselors should provide an alternate email id for transfer students to invite them.