Several of the nation’s top colleges and universities have postponed their early application deadlines over the last few days, prompted by continued reports that students and high schools are stumbling over technical problems with the Common Application.

Nov. 1 deadlines have been pushed back to Nov. 8 at Northwestern, the University of Chicago, Duke, Columbia, Barnard, Dartmouth and Tufts. Boston University announced a delay to Nov. 15, while Syracuse postponed its Nov. 15 deadline to Dec. 1. Earlier, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill extended their Oct. 15 deadlines to Oct. 21.

“There’s always anxiety approaching deadlines, but this has been on a different scale,” said Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions at Duke. “We’ve been getting a lot of e-mails, a lot of phone calls, from students and counselors and teachers who were feeling very challenged by the process.”

At colleges that have announced delays, officials said they hoped it would not only give some practical relief to people struggling with the application, but also calm them down.