Troubleshooting & FAQs

 

Prepping for Document Sending - Students

 

I already paired my Common App & BridgeU accounts but then I created a new Common App account

To ensure that you and your advisor are collaborating on the same account, it is recommended to communicate with your advisor directly. If you have already submitted something on the new Common App account, kindly inform us, and we will create a new BridgeU account that aligns with your updated Common App account. It is strongly advised to stick to using only one Common App account to streamline the application process.

I entered my school in Common App but I am still able to invite my counselor & teacher recommenders

There could be two possible reasons for this issue. Firstly, it's possible that you haven't successfully paired your Common App account with your BridgeU account. To address this, please refer to the provided article for instructions on how to pair the accounts. It's important to note that you should not manually enter school details on Common App, as they will be automatically added during the pairing process.

Alternatively, if the issue is related to incorrect pairing of your school with the BridgeU integration, our support team can help resolve it. Please reach out to us through Live Chat or by emailing hi@bridge-u.com to seek assistance in resolving this matter.

I already invited my Counselor or Teacher Recommenders on Common App before pairing my accounts

Unfortunately, this will prevent Counselors and Teachers from uploading recommendations through BridgeU. To resolve this, you can manually remove recommendation requests put through your Common App accounts. To do so, go to the trash can icon on your Recommender & FERPA page on the Common App and remove the specific teacher. Please also refer to the third item of this article. If the removal is no longer available for you to self-serve, please email hi@bridge-u.com and provide your CAID. We'll contact Common App for you to resolve this.

 

Prepping for Document Sending - Advisors

How do I know which students have or haven't matched their Common App accounts?

 

1. From Advisor's Document Sending page

2. From Student's Applications page (you can view student's dashboard to go to their Applications page)

 

Advisor's Document Sending page

On Document Sending landing page, you will be able to use the filters to sort out students who have not paired their Common App account and/or have not answered FERPA, or has waived/not waived FERPA.

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If you are seeing the following screen, there are 2 possibilities below. You can always check on student's Applications page by viewing their dashboard.

1. The student hasn't paired with Common App.

2. The student has paired with Common App and haven't added any applications on Common App yet.

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Sending Documents using Common App

I keep getting errors when filling out a Common App form. What's going on?

If your student's form in the School Report has a red-lined bubble, it means that the form is incomplete. It will be filled with light red when it is complete and ready to be sent. Example:

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To find out which questions are incomplete, click 'Save' at the top of the form and you will see error messages above fields that you will require to fill in or amend the answer.

 

There are two places where you may need to complete these questions. Firstly, there might be an incomplete question in the student's form. Secondly, you might need to return to the whole school report in School Settings. Once you've completed all the questions, click Save on the individual student form and you will see a green tick.

If the bubble is still showing red, take a look at our article on Common App Form Errors. If you cannot find your issue or the solution is not working, please reach out to us at hi@bridge-u.com and provide screenshots and details including, which student's document you are working on and which form.

How do I send documents to a university that says 'document sending not supported'?

Check the university website to understand how the university accepts documents e.g. direct to them. Most likely we do not support it however, if you have information that they do accept documents through Common App/Parchment, please send your information to us and we will look into this.

How do I send transcripts for students that transferred to my school?

Schools are able to indicate up to 4 transcript documents on the School Report.  You can upload up to 4 documents as 'initial transcripts'. This could include transcripts from the student's previous school(s). Alternatively, you could combine documents to send as a single PDF but please note that Common App has a file size limit of 2MB per document.

Remember, the number indicated on the School Report must match the number of initial transcript documents uploaded, so if you say '2' and then only upload 1 initial transcript you will receive an error message.

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Tracking Documents

Why are documents showing as sent on BridgeU but not showing as submitted on student's Common App?

When you click send in BridgeU, it means that the document is sent to Common App but remains in standby mode. However, the documents will only be officially sent to a university once the student submits their application on Common App.

In the situation you described, where a Teacher Recommendation for a particular student is marked as sent in BridgeU to university A, but the student's Common App shows the same recommendation as not started it is likely because the student has not yet submitted their application on Common App.

The Teacher Recommendation has been successfully delivered to Common App, but it will only be processed and sent to the University once the student submits their application on Common App. Therefore, the discrepancy in the status between BridgeU and Common App is due to the student's application submission status.

 

Unsubmit forms/documents (Common App)

Why the document bubble is yellow and stating 'un-submitting'?

The un-submitting task usually takes a few seconds to complete the un-submission. Once it's completed, the page will refresh itself. If it takes too long, don't worry, you only need to refresh the page and you'll see the un-submission puts the sending status of the form to "complete" status (red bubble).

The un-submission is successful on BridgeU but it's still showing the form has been submitted to universities on Common App.

This means that one of the Universities has already downloaded the form. BridgeU automatically synchronised the data from Common App every 24 hours. The university has downloaded the documents before the next synchronisation. You can click sync now on the student's document sending page to manually sync the latest data. After this, you'll see the sending status of the form bounce back to sent status (green bubble). In this case, if you'd like to update information or transcripts/school profiles, you can use the School Optional Report to update.


If you have any questions, need further assistance or have some general feedback for us - we’d love to hear from you! Contact our Support team via Live Chat and by emailing hi@bridge-u.com.

Don't forget to check out our Document Sending Tips for the 2023-2024 season!

You can also ask our BridgeU Community, a space exclusively for our BridgeU counsellors to ask questions, share insights, provide feedback and get help not just from BridgeU, but directly from other BridgeU counsellors.

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