<p>We live on the west coast and our son finished the Common Application Supplement essays for his final 3 schools at 8:45PM. I uploaded the supplement for the first school (a reach) at 8:55PM which showed as submitted 01/01/2010. I then attempted to pay the application fee, at which point the site slowed down to a crawl. Fee was paid at about 9:05PM and showed as submitted 01/02/2010. Hit submit for the application at about 9:10PM and showed as submitted 01/02/2010. Went on to the other two applications and finished up about 9:25PM.
Two of the three applications had deadlines of 01/01/2010, the other 01/04/2010.
Are we hosed on the two that had the 1/1 deadlines because we thought we had until OUR midnight?
If so, it's not the end of the world as we've already submitted apps for 4 safety, 6 match and 4 reaches prior to these. I think that living on the west coast we should have until midnight OUR time to submit.</p>
<p>The deadline as far as I know is midnight in the time zone of the college, so for the two due 1/1 your son was late. However, it seems as though most colleges have a grace period for these sorts of things and will accept your son’s apps even if they were a bit tardy.</p>
<p>I doubt very seriously that those two schools will be refunding your application fees.</p>
<p>My son states that he committees are not aware when materials arrive. Its the office workers who compile the apps, the LORs, the scores. Since it is a weekend, I don’t think it would be an issue, regardless.</p>
<p>Thanks all. We’ll find out for certain next week.
At least they’re done.</p>
<p>One year U of Chicago had the funniest blog about just this idea. They said they’d take the application if it was still 1/2 (I believe they had a grace day for post office to be open) and gave a chart of longitudes and time zones. It was hilarious and just so Chicago.</p>
<p>I, too, think it will be fine.</p>
<p>Thanks mythmom.
I’d told him earlier in the day that our drop dead was 9PM due to the time zone difference, thinking we really had until midnight. Funny that after all this time he actually did meet the deadline I gave him. Now the waiting…</p>
<p>Hi, I had a similar experience in November.<br>
This very nice note in answer to a query to the Common Ap people:
"All application deadlines are as of 11:59pm on the stated deadline day. The Common Application records all dates (deadlines, form submission dates, payment dates) in Eastern Time. Schools not located in the eastern time zone may choose to extend their application deadlines to the end of a deadline day in their local time zone or may accept your documents up until the posted deadline in their local time zone (even though your submission time stamp will be recorded in Eastern Time). For example, a school located in California may accept your application until 2:59am eastern time, which is equivalent to 11:59pm pacific time. Since this is on a school-by-school basis and this is not information that is available to you, we recommend you submit based on the Eastern Time deadline. Most colleges will accept the submission if it is within a reasonable time period around their deadline. "</p>
<p>The funny thing was, D’s app’s were submitted about 12 hours before the deadline, since we are on the other side of the dateline. She had plenty of time…</p>
<p>In hindsight if I had told him the drop dead time was 9PM 12/31/09 he would have had them done at 8:45PM 12/31/09. It’s all good!</p>
<p>The former Caltech admission director told the audience that he had fun to watch the peak computer traffic at the last minutes of the deadline every year. My son enjoyed what the director said and waited to the last minutes to please him while I was about to have a heart attack. His app went thru without incident about 5-10 minutes before the deadline.</p>
<p>I would not recommend this if your kid apply to other colleges. Some college computers may not have straightforward steps and raise all red flags when the submit button is pressed. You don’t want to get panic to jump all over the web pages to correct the errors.</p>