Everything You Wrote in July Is Gone. Here's What Survived and How to Rebuild It.
A rising senior who invited her chemistry teacher to write a recommendation on July 20 has not invited anyone. The invitation was deleted at 5 p.m. Eastern on July 28, when the 2025-26 Common App closed, and it did not come back when the platform reopened on August 1. Neither did her signed FERPA release. Neither did the four hundred words she had already drafted into a supplemental essay box.
Her personal statement is fine. Her activities list is fine. That split is not arbitrary, and understanding where it falls is most of what a student needs to know to recover in an afternoon rather than a week.
Open the surviving folder
The Common App is divided into two halves. One is called My Common Application, and it holds the material that goes to every college: profile, family, education, testing, activities, the writing section with the personal essay, additional information, and courses and grades. The other is My Colleges, and it holds everything that belongs to a specific institution: that college's questions, its supplemental essays, its deadline selection, the FERPA release, recommender invitations.
The first half rolls over. The second half is wiped and rebuilt from the member colleges' new files. Karen Hott, a college counselor at Two Bridges College Consulting, gave rising seniors the compressed version of that rule in late July: "Stay out of the 'My Colleges' section till after August 1."
Two things complicate the line, and both of them cost students time every August.
One item on the My Colleges side does survive. Advisor invitations, the mechanism by which a student grants a counselor or independent consultant read-only access to the application, persist across the reset. Recommender invitations do not. The two live near each other in the interface and behave in opposite ways, which is why students who worked with an outside counselor over the summer often assume their teachers are still connected. They are not.
Survival inside My Common Application is also conditional. Responses to questions that have changed or been removed may not carry over. Review Family, Testing, Activities and Experiences, and the writing fields directly in the new cycle rather than assuming a completed July section remains complete. The current form, not a saved screenshot or last year’s checklist, determines what needs an answer.
For help connecting this decision to the rest of an application, explore App Identity™.
Audit the missing fields
So the practical instruction for the first ten minutes after logging back in is to read, not to type. Open every section of My Common Application and confirm what actually came across. A blank field you assume is filled is worse than one you know is empty.
Here is the full inventory of what did not survive:
recommender invitations to teachers and counselors
the FERPA Release Authorization
every college-specific question and supplemental essay response
Our college admissions consulting services explain the kinds of planning and application support available.
Rebuild in the right order
the answer to the Common App fee waiver question
direct admissions offers and scholarship matches from the prior cycle
letters of recommendation that were already submitted, which matters mainly to transfer and gap-year applicants
responses to any question that was edited or removed
Rebuilding that list has an order, and one step in it cannot be undone.
Log in and complete the rollover first. Returning students get a Welcome Back screen that asks them to confirm a handful of details, the important one being intended enrollment year; a current senior selects 2027. Nothing migrates until that confirmation goes through. Then choose which colleges from last year's list to carry forward.
When evaluating advice, look at who provides it. Meet The Ivy Institute’s team.
Protect the next draft
Do not create a second account simply because the first one looks empty. Start with the existing account and complete the rollover prompts. If you genuinely cannot access it, contact Common App’s Student Solutions Center. A duplicate account can complicate matching records and is not a recovery strategy.
Next, review the FERPA release before inviting recommenders. Common App’s official guidance says the decision can no longer be changed after a school form or application has been submitted—not merely when an invitation is sent. Review the choice carefully, and contact support if the account does not allow an expected change. A July decision lost in the rollover needs to be completed again.
When the re-invitations go out, tell the teachers. A recommender who accepted an invitation on July 20 receives a second, near-identical email in August and has no way to tell from the message whether something went wrong. Schools running Naviance or Scoir add a layer here: in those buildings, recommendation requests are handled through the school platform rather than through Common App directly, and the FERPA waiver has to be complete before the systems will connect.
Supplemental essays are the one loss with no procedural fix, only a preventive one. The drafts are gone, and a fair number of the prompts they answered are gone too, since colleges revise their questions during exactly this window and several dropped supplements outright this year. A student who wrote in a Google Doc and pasted into the box has lost nothing and can paste again. A student who typed directly into the field has lost the work. There is no version history in a Common App text box and no recovery request that will produce one.
That is the whole of it: confirm the rollover, audit what survived, review FERPA, reconnect recommenders through the correct school workflow, and rebuild college-specific answers from saved drafts. The time required depends on what was lost and which prompts changed. A clear inventory saves more time than rushing into the first empty box.
For the broader writing context, read our analysis of why disappearing essays can complicate an application.
Rebuild the application in order.
Your working checklist
0 checks complete
Entries stay in this page and are not submitted or stored. Copy or download before leaving. Avoid sensitive personal information.
Bring the evidence back to your own decision.
The practical takeaway is not a universal shortcut. It is a better question to ask before the next application decision. Keep your worksheet, verify requirements at the source, and return to the parts of the file you can actually improve.
For individual planning, contact The Ivy Institute. Continue with our guide to purposeful supplemental writing when preparing a response a college still requires.
Sources, scope and editorial notes
This is analysis based on the supplied article and linked sources, not firsthand reporting or legal advice. Factual corrections and qualifications were made before publication. Illustrations and worksheet mechanics are explanatory; they do not represent official application screens or predict outcomes. Policies can change: verify the current college, program or platform instructions before acting.
