College applications have evolved in recent years, and now they are available in two basic formats: electronic and paper-based. You can download applications in PDF format and print them out if you want, or you may also submit a request via the internet (visit the college's undergraduate admissions/prospective student website)/a phone call to the admissions office/a form at the admissions office. When it comes time to submit your application to college, you may wish to complete the entire application online for the sake of neatness and storage ability; a paper application is subject to poor handwriting, smudging or misplacement.
You can almost always save your application on the college's server, so you do not need to finish the application in one sitting. Nevertheless, if you come back, you will probably need a login ID and password so make sure you keep that saved somewhere safe--it's usually a hassle to recover.
As mentioned earlier, you can usually download the complete application online. If you want an extra copy/do not want to print an entire PDF application, you can call up the admissions office and provide your contact info to get an application. Yet the admissions office usually has more important tasks to handle than that, so you are better off going to the admissions site and filling out a preset form that virtually every college offers.
Here is a sample of what you might find when searching for a place to submit your info to get on a college mailing list/request an app: (UPenn) http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/applying/incoming.php.
Look for similar pages at other colleges.
Currently most colleges will say that you need to wait until the end of summer to access the application. Typically at this point colleges will mail out apps to candidates on their mailing lists and apps become available for downloading. Be ready to check out the college sites at this point and put together your set of applications for potential colleges.
