The majority of students applying to American universities use the Common Application, a more streamlined way of putting in your grades, courses, test scores, and extracurricular activities. While many universities still attach sizable supplemental applications, for most high school students, the Common App is the way to go.
In recent years, the Common App has done a great job of expanding to other universities around the world. Currently, you can use the Common App to apply to more than two dozen programs in the UK and Ireland, including some pretty big name schools like St. Andrews and Durham.
However, chances are that you absolutely should not do it.
For starters. The application fees alone are a ripoff. To apply through UCAS, the application fee is about $30 for five programs. For St. Andrews by itself, it’s $75. As you can imagine, that could start to add up quickly.
Additionally, the Common App essay for UK schools would be fundamentally different to what they are used to admitting students on. Not every UK university asks for a supplement to the Common App, and personal statements in the UK and US fundamentally are written quite differently.
This is also the reason that your extracurricular activities simply won’t matter for UK admissions on the Common App. British admissions officers, outside of places that get a lot of US applicants (and, of those on the Common App, it’s just St. Andrews), largely don’t care about extracurricular activities. If it’s something that relates to what you want to study, then it might have applicability, but other than that, it simply doesn’t matter.
Still, there is one case in which applying using the Common App may not be a bad idea.
If you have a number of extracurricular activities that all directly link back to your purpose of studying and you are only applying to one or two UK universities, then it might be worth doing. This is highly situational, and there is a likelihood that the university may just skim over the activities page.
Otherwise, just go with UCAS. It’s faster, cheaper, and a lot less stress