In my extracurriculars section, I stated that I was captain of a sports team, but now I realize it would be more accurate to say co-captain because there is one other captain. Should I change this?
@haewon18944 - This is an error you DO need to correct. Your mistake will not affect your application “negatively.” On the contrary, it could make your English grades and Reading/Writing test results appear better than they already are, if the admission folks assume that English isn’t your first language. So you need to correct this right away. Otherwise, it could be considered a form of cheating, even if not done intentionally.
@dadunda - If you were doing your applications from scratch, I would insist on saying “Co-Captain.” But this is not something that you want to bug admission folks about now that it’s after the fact. Technically, you ARE the captain … even though there’s another captain, too. So let it go. BUT, if you do have any upcoming interviews, you might want to mention this small error.
I took a 4-credit math course at a local top 40 university. Should
I update colleges because I forget to mention that the course
Was on a full scholarship (due to 800 on sat math in 7th grade). They know about the course, but not the scholarship (or the reason why). Should I update them about the scholarship? If so, how about the reason why?
Additionally, this week I enrolled in 2 CS courses on coursera; most colleges I applied to for math or electrical engineering. Would this be a worthwhile update to make to my colleges? Maybe the ones I applied to for math? What about the 1-school I applied to for CS? I also may drop one of these courses, so I might have to wait.
Should I also combine these 2 updates to make them more noticeable?
I have answered your questions via PM
@Sally_Rubenstone
When I was applying to a college I was stupid and accidentally submitted draft versions of my essays (Common App was crashing and I was close to the deadline). I contacted the admissions office and they said that while they couldn’t get rid of my original submission, I was allowed to submit my intended supplement as well for consideration. So that’s exactly what I did. Just getting a little worried now…do you think this could be held significantly against me even if they did allow me to resubmit it?
Specifically, one of my essays had some minor edits, but the other was entirely rewritten.
Oh, and I also put down that I authored a paper when I was actually a co-author…worth correcting?
@laundrybasket -You should definitely NOT correct that co-author listing. It is much too picky and, especially, too late.
As for your essay snafu … no, this will not be “significantly” held against you. Because each admission official is different and brings his or her own preferences and personality to the table, it’s likely that some evaluators won’t care at all about your essay-replacement situation while others may view it as a sign that you were careless and disorganized … but, even so, this won’t affect your outcomes in a major way. Admission folks are typically sympathetic to the stress and confusion that this crazy process can cause, although some are far more sympathetic than others, so hopefully you’ll get lucky and all of your adjudicators will fall into that latter group.
@Sally_Rubenstone
Hi just a quick question. I realize it’s too late to do anything about this but I just realized that I misrepresented one of my Olympiad awards on my app. The award is ‘honorable mention’ for placing top 50, but I accidentally named it ‘high honors’.
I put it down because another Olympiad calls it ‘high honors’ for the same placement (I didn’t realize this one did it differently). In fact, this Olympiad doesn’t even have a ‘high honors’, it just calls it honorable mention. I also put down my specific placement in the Olympiad, which is corroborated by my recommendations.
Though it’s much too late to change, I’m a bit scared that colleges will think I’m intentionally lying and silently reject my app. Would they do this? Or would they call my GC if they suspected anything?
@spazzer4501 - When I started reading your post, I thought, "How could anyone accidentally list an ‘Honorable Mention’ as ‘High Honors’? But once I continued, it seems like a very legit mistake and also one that you need not worry about. The rest of your application should clarify your position, and the college folks are going to be too busy rushing through thousands of applications to consider that you intentionally inflated your results. In a perfect world, it would have been better if you hadn’t made this mistake, but under the circumstances I suggest letting it go and not stressing over it.
appreciate it @Sally_Rubenstone. if they suspected anything would they have contacted my GC first? i got a bit of an ‘unexpected’ rejection a couple days ago, and im just playing out a scenario where the college calls the olympiad, who tell them they have no such award, and then they reject my app without a word. perhaps i’m being paranoid, but i don’t know…is this common?
@spazzer4501 -
Yep, you are being paranoid. If admission officials had that much free time, they’d probably use it to run out to Taco Bell, not to sit on the phone iwth the Olympiad folks!
Haha point taken
I accidentally wrote in my essay “Consequently, as I starting interacting with others” instead of “started”. What should I do?
@tmazing … Eat a Snickers bar, watch a little TV, do a favor for a friend (or a stranger) and forget about it. This won’t have any impact on your college outcomes, so relax.
What if I spelled a club name wrong like I put “Mu Alpha Deta” instead of “Mu Alpha Theta” on my resume to college.
Do I need to send a note?
@Sally_Rubenstone I fear I made 2 errors in my application. Firstly, as Im from India I spelled ‘organized’ as ‘organised’ in several cases. Secondly, instead of writing ‘Whartons’ in an Extra Curricular activity, I wrote ‘Whartons’. Are these errors something to worry about?
And in my common app essay I wrote organized correctly because i was using word autocorrect, but for another essay of mine and the activities section I wrote organised 
I realized that for one of my main activities I accidentally checked 9-12 grades of participation when I meant to check 11-12 grades. Should I send an email to the admissions office of the school I applied to correcting my mistake?
I realize that the admission process is very demanding and stressful, and I sympathize with the anxiety that application errors can bring when they’re discovered after the application has been submitted. But I can’t go through yet another season saying the same things over and over, so I will say this once more, and then I will close the thread if my words go unheeded.
Do not notify colleges about any application errors unless they are huge. Most are not … especially spelling mistakes and typos.
Please use common sense when posting on this thread. Try to figure this stuff out on your own. It’s good training for college! And keep in mind that most of your post-submission sleepless nights are probably over small screw-ups that no admission officials care about or even notice.
So after submitting my Georgia Tech application for common apps on October 15, I realized today that I did not put any club activities in the Activities section of the common apps. I thought this statement
“Reporting activities can help a college better understand your life outside of the classroom. Your activities may include arts, athletics, clubs, employment, personal commitments, and other pursuits. Do you have any activities that you wish to report?”
means that only report out of school activities because of that phrase “outside of the classroom”, and that is what I did… Is there any ways to edit and put in my club activities? Or is this section really only for out of school activities or something, but I highly doubt it is…
Hi, I submitted my CSS Profile to Harvard yesterday and just realized that I had combined my parents’ retirement into just the space for my dad’s retirement, leaving my mom’s at $0. I’m not really sure what vibe this gives off to the admissions officer – maybe that my dad is super rich (which he’s not) and my mom just has no retirement for some reason? Should I send a letter to them correcting it and will it hurt my application?