Ask any high school senior how the college application process works. Chances are, they’ll tell you it’s at best mildly cumbersome and at worst comparable to the struggle of finals week. Getting into college is a wonderful feeling. Knowing that a college wants you to attend the following year is gratifying, especially so when it’s your top choice. But getting to that stage in the application game is difficult. It involves a chaotic combination of letters of recommendation, essays, financial aid profiles and many more minute details about life, sometimes seemingly irrelevant to attending a college.

With the introduction of technology into the process, many private institutions in America have gladly adopted the Common Application, a unified application for a conglomerate of these colleges. Students commonly see the Common Application as a necessary evil that ever so slightly makes the application process easier. Many question why applying to college has to be difficult and complex. In other countries, such as England, students have a central application that works with all—yes all—colleges in the country. There’s no need to figure out how exactly to apply to a specific university since it is a streamlined and much simpler process. Students do not have to write an essay that somehow reflects their personality in 500 words or less. Instead, a few essays given to every college focus on what a student intends to do academically.

Specifically in England, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service provides a one-and-done approach to applications. The application is filled out with essays that are not college-specific and then sent to maximum of five universities. If a student doesn’t get accepted into any of those five colleges, they will not be attending a college the following year.

This system is both beneficial to the colleges and to the students applying. Students pay a much smaller amount to apply to colleges (around $40 in total) and only focus their attention on one application. Once they apply, that’s it. The process is done. Students only have one deadline for all their colleges, and their colleges all know that the student truly wants to attend. Admissions officers love this concept as they no longer have to play the guessing game on exactly how many students to admit.

The United States could see a huge benefit from a similar system. With thousands of colleges all having different deadlines, different essays and, most importantly, different applications, a universal system would provide a way for students to connect to any college they wish. Students would also be able to focus directly on the essays that the universal application would require, specifically essays that focus more so on what the student plans on doing academically and instead of how they’re going to love chess club.