i just realized that in my yale app, i didn’t capitalize the first letter of my entries in the activities section?? i did capitalize proper nouns (like the name of orgs/clubs), but the rest was in lowercase (esp in the description – each clause was separated by semicolons and had no subject so i didn’t think to capitalize at the time). is this a big deal? im kinda freaking out
If you are rejected or deferred, it will NOT because you used lowercase letters in the actives section. So, you can relax about that issue!
Never a good idea to pore over that application once submitted . . .
Seeing that there are no capital letters at all in your opening post, including the pronoun “I” which you used four times, it seems that you have a sloppy relationship with your keyboard’s shift key. I suggest you work on that.
That said, I doubt it matters.
I obviously capitalized “I” and the first letter of every sentence in my college essays. I didn’t think I had to follow all grammatical conventions on College Confidential…but thank you for your help!
OP, You most likely aren’t the first application Yale has seen that utilizes slightly different rules of capitalization and so forth from prior generations. It shouldn’t kill a dynamic application, and it’s doubtful that capitalizing would have saved a mediocre one. Here’s something to think about, however: @sherpa did you a favor by making that point. No - you don’t have to capitalize properly on CC. But do you really want your resume and activities section of the application to read like a text or a posting on social media? It appears that you didn’t give much thought to the fact that your audience might be a tad different this time before you hit that “submit” button. That’s why you are freaking now.
Keep in mind the ages of the adults who are reviewing these applications and - later on when you are trying to get an internship - your resume and cover letter. They will be making major decisions about your life so speaking “their language” can only help you - at the very least, you will stand out from all the others who neglected to think this through. A good way to practice would be, going forward, to write all your future CC and social media posts using the proper rules of grammar, punctuation and - yes - capitalization. That way you don’t have to worry about whether you capitalized properly or not and will avoid future freakouts.
I understand the point that you and @sherpa are trying to make but I do want to add that this wasn’t a careless decision. I used clauses, not complete sentences, so I thought it would be strange to capitalize them. I only realized that other people favor capitalization after looking at some of my friends’ apps and merely wanted to know if the way I formatted my activities would have any bearing upon my app.
It’s possible to over-capitalize today (as opposed to norms in earlier eras - check out the Dec. of Independence for a great example!). Seriously, this really doesn’t matter because the admissions people are reading very quickly so whatever style helps them read the info easily is best. Please put down your friends’ apps and go back to doing YOUR thing - not reading about theirs.