<p>My son submitted UC app today.
Unfortunately after submitting he noticed that in the essays where he put quotation marks and apostrophes, they were all changed to question marks after copy/paste.<br>
About eight question marks appeared in place of quotations marks and apostrophes.
Is there any way to correct this at this point?
If not, with this mistake, does he still have a chance at any of the UC schools?
Needless to say he is very upset and nervous that he will be rejected from all campuses including the safety ones.</p>
<p>This is a trivial formatting issue and doesn’t change the content of what he wrote. I wouldn’t give it a second thought.</p>
<p>It’s going to be obvious to a reader, given the context, what the appropriate punctuation should be. Your son will not be alone in this challenge and it is not going to be an issue. The content is the same.</p>
<p>Agree with the others, no problem.</p>
<p>FOR ANYONE ELSE READING THIS THREAD: This is a problem that is a result of the use of “smart” quotation marks in a program such as MS Word. That results in a character that is not recognized as legitimate when cut and paste into a program using standard plan text ASCII format. The solution is to turn off the fancy typography features in Word before typing the essay.</p>
<p>It isn’t going to be a problem for UC admission; the essay readers are told to ignore those kinds of issues.</p>
<p>However…and a good learning experience…the UC instructions specifically state that the applicant should review the essay for accuracy after copy/pasting it into the application. If it wasn’t easily visible on screen (the box is pretty small) it is something that should have jumped out when he printed the review copy before submitting the application. If he didn’t print a review copy and proofread it before submitting it, this is a good time to learn that there is a reason for proofreading, and an advantage to carefully doing so rather than rushing to hit the final submit button.</p>
<p>(You know that; but perhaps this will help him understand that he needs to know that too.)</p>
<p>If he didn’t carefully proofread the application, I’d strongly suggest checking now that he entered all his courses, grades and test scores with absolute accuracy – mistakes on those screens could have a material impact on admission, or could even cause the campus to withdraw an offer of admission. (UC campuses don’t get transcripts during the application process; grade evaluation is all based on what the applicant self-reports.)</p>
<p>This wasn’t a proof reading issue – its a text conversion issue, and usually it isn’t apparent after a mere cut-and-paste. If the web application gives the person a chance to preview their entry after they click the “submit” key the first time, before a final “submit” – then he could have read over the text – but it is very possible that this character substitution didn’t become apparent until it was too late.</p>
<p>It is a very common issue with cutting and pasting text into web applications. Again, the problem is a result of the use of special characters (“smart quotes”) rather than simple ASCII text.</p>
<p>Same thing happened to my son, when he submitted the application. On cut and paste all looked fine, but after submit both of his personal statements filled with a?? and other formatting gibberish, like some words that start with w, got broken down to be “w hy” instead of “why” etc. It made essay very difficult to read. That is a serious glitch in online application, especially given the importance of personal statement. I wonder how many other people experience it and how UC application administrators address this issues.</p>
<p>I already subbmited my uc application and i made a mistake on my community service section. For example, I put 30 weeks instead of 20 weeks. I already emailed UC admission to change my application today. Will this hurt my chances of being accepted?</p>
<p>heyhey10, you should start your own thread for your own topic, not hijack an existing one that is talking about formatting issues. Post your thread in the College Admissions forum.</p>
<p>Just saw this on an official document on the UC website: </p>
<p>“Grammatical and spelling errors, although they do not count against an applicant…”</p>
<p>see: <a href=“http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/files/presenting-yourself-uc-application-freshman.pdf[/url]”>http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/how-to-apply/files/presenting-yourself-uc-application-freshman.pdf</a></p>
<p>seems like no need to worry :-)</p>