By Natalie Roach
The Church Educational System has recently provided a universal application for all church-run schools. This, coupled with the fact that the application is available online, has made the admissions process much easier for scores of students.
According to Jeffrey M. Tanner, associate dean of admissions in the admissions and records office, this is the first year a common application has been available for all four schools run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: BYU, Ricks, BYU-Hawaii and the LDS Business College.
Some real benefits of this new uniform application process are that a bishop only has to complete one letter of recommendation and high schools need to send transcripts only one time, Tanner said.
The information is then made available to the institutions specified by the students, he said.
Applications have been available online for about the last four or five years, according to Tanner.
He estimates approximately 80 percent of all current applicants take advantage of the online application process.
There are several benefits to applying online, he said.
The two most important assets of using the online application process are that students can validate their information and be sure their data has been received, and there is a decrease in the chance of human error, Tanner said.
Laura Smith, 20, a sophomore from Brush Prairie, Wash., majoring in business, doesn''t completely trust the Internet when it comes to applying for school.
Although familiar with the Internet, Smith chose to fill out her application on paper because she felt it offered more security.
'I was scared that if I applied online, some of the information would get lost over the Internet. Even the smallest thing could get lost online,' Smith said.
'BYU was my first choice and I wanted to be totally sure that all of my information got there.'
Incidentally, Smith applied online to Ricks. She wasn''t as concerned about being accepted to Ricks as to BYU so she didn''t mind risking sending her information over the Internet, she said.
Kristyn Pincock, 22, a senior from Omaha, Neb., majoring in elementary education, applied to BYU through a paper application, rather than online. In retrospect, she wishes she had applied over the Internet. She remembers being concerned about making mistakes on paper.
'I had three copies of the application, just in case I messed up and had to start over,' Pincock said.
Pincock recalls her father telling her that she could apply to BYU online, but she felt too inexperienced with computers at the time to feel comfortable with the Internet.
Since then, two of Kristyn''s younger brothers applied online to BYU and did not run into any problems.
'I can see now that applying online is so convenient. You just go on the computer and enter your information. It eliminates a whole step,' Pincock said.
A one-time application fee of $25 is required for each school to which a student is applying, according to the CES Web site.
Prospective students can apply to any or all of these schools by filling out an application found at www.ldsces.edu.