@mamabear01-The EA college will have all the appropriate information before a decision is made so I can’t imagine that the late change will affect your son’s verdict. Good luck with the EA outcome, and if your son doesn’t get good news, rest assured that it won’t be due to the last-minute schedule update.
However, I assume that, although your son dropped the AP Physics C, he must have some other 'heavy hitter" sciences on his transcript. If not, it could hurt him at the more selective colleges. But given that he is valedictorian, I suspect that his course load has been rigorous.
I submitted my common app for a couple of colleges and for one parent’s work status, I put as retired, but he’s out of retirement now. Should I contact the colleges to correct this mistake?
@collegesoon12 -If you answered the parent-employment question honestly at the time that you submitted your applications, you only need to contact admission offices to report this change if there is something truly significant about your father coming out of retirement (e.g., if he is Michael Jordan or Pete Rose). In fact, if this parent is any sort of major tycoon or luminary, it might help your admission odds to amend his job situation, but this sort of VIP status is rare.
However, if you have already submitted financial aid forms, you should revise those. (Depending on when exactly your parent returned to work, your freshman financial aid package may or may not change … assuming you applied for aid in the first place.)
What if I accidentally mentioned another college in an essay. Both the colleges had the same international economics course, so for the Cornell application, I accidentally wrote “I would love to take Columbia’s International …” How do I fix that situation :-S
I tranferred high schools I attended one school from 2012-2013 and another from 2013- present but on the education section i put doen i attended the second school starting in 2014. I emailed all the colleges i submitted my apps to informing them of the error but is this error very serious?
@Njkumar303 -I feel your pain, but you won’t be the first student to make this kind of mistake, and college admission officials are accustomed such errors. They realize that applying to a competitor college isn’t like cheating on a significant other. If acceptance rates were 100 percent, it would be a different story. But aiming for Ivy League universities … where ten qualified candidates are turned away for each one admitted … means that you have to spread admission risk. And if you’re smart enough to be considering places like Cornell and Columbia, the college folks certainly hope that you’re smart enough to know this.
Of course, in a perfect world, you’d have proofread more carefully, but now that the toothpaste is out of the tube, how do you deal with it?
Well, there are two diametrically opposed options, and I recommend that you pick whichever one you’re most comfortable with.
1. You could just ignore the mistake because sending a correction will call attention to it. It's possible that the admission officials at Cornell are so rushed and tired that they won't even notice the goof. And, if they do, they're likely to understand.
2. You can write to your regional rep with a humorous correction. For instance, try a limerick;
There once was a careless young dude,
Who said, “I am royally screwed …
I named the wrong school
in an essay (not cool!).
Will I be unfavorably viewed?”
Obviously, use your own words … hopefully better than mine … but you get the idea.
@sheworksforthewe -This is not a problem in the least. Your have sent a correction, and admission officials will also see the actual dates of attendance at your two schools on your transcript. So you’re all set, and this minor mistake will have no effect on your admission decisions.
thank you so much. I had another question, Will adcoms really look at the future plans section of the common app? I put down business but that’s what I wanna do for grad school. For undergrad I want to major in english and my essays reflect that. Will they care too much or will the understand because I talk about wanting to build schools in other countries and that’s kin of business related?
I feel like it would only matter to two of my colleges, where I talked in the supplements about becoming a teacher. Should I email those two schools and explain that I also want to get a degree in business management later on or is it negligible? Sorry if I sound OCD right now but I’m extremely stressed!
Hi Sally,
I realized I have made what I consider to be a large mistake on the activities section. I have been a member of student council for three years and I described the activity as “Student Council Recording Secretary.” I intended to express that I had organized and recorded information in individual committees within the student council, not that I had assumed the position for student council as a whole. I felt this was the best title to describe my informal role but now I feel as though it is misleading. I was able to catch the mistake after applying to only two schools, but unfortunately they are my top choices.
Frankly, I am disappointed in myself for not clarifying this on my application. Should I send the schools an email correcting my mistake? I’m very torn. I feel that I will come off as either disingenuous or paranoid. The admissions office may not even notice, but I would prefer to be honest instead of risking my application being rescinded over my accidental miscommunication.
@hkhkhkhk -That’s a classic goof! Admission folks see at least one like that every year and often many. You will give them a little smile, perhaps on a cold winter night. So don’t worry about it. Check out my post above (#305). You can either ignore this or correct it with a clever retort. But, in this case, you’ll have to be careful to keep a “clever” retort in good taste. So you may just want to leave it alone.
@bandgeek22498 -Leave it alone! I read your message three times before I could figure out your error. You will drive admission folks nuts if you send a correction, and your acceptance will not be rescinded due to this tiny discrepancy. What you CAN do, however, is this: If you end up having interviews for any of the colleges that got the “incorrect” version of the application, you can briefly clarify the confusion for your interviewer. But don’t dwell on it. It’s no biggie. As long as you actually did assume the onerous role of taking notes at committee meetings, you don’t have to worry about bad karma either because you clearly built up a lot of good karma already!
Hi Sally,
In the Carnegie Mellon question
List the books (if any) you’ve read this year for pleasure. Choose one and in a sentence describe its impact on you
I missed the IMPACT bit what should I do?
And will this affect my admission decision
PS: I am international Student.
@FyodorD-If the admission folks at CMU think you’re fabulous in every other way, the missed information on your application won’t hurt you. But I think it makes sense to send a brief correction to your regional rep (the staff member who covers applicants from your country. If you can’t get the name from the Web site, contact the admission office to ask).
Briefly explain that you missed that critical part of the question, and then supply the required explanations. Maybe you could do it in a humorous way … e.g., “I love to read and enjoy digging deep in the text to explore multiple interpretations, but apparently I’m not as thorough when it comes to reading *instructions … *”
Hi Sally, by accident, I wrote 14 years instead of 17 years for “Number of years lived outside of U.S.” and 0 for “Number of years lived in U.S.”.
So it makes me look like a 14 year old when I’m actually 17
Is this a big deal? Should I email the colleges?
Thanks so much!
@chrisnyal -It’s not a big deal but you can send your regional rep a very short email with a light-hearted correction … something along the lines of this …
“Sometimes my keyboard has a mind of its own. I thought I’d written that I’d lived outside of the US for 17 years (the true answer) but when I re-read my application (after submission) I was surprised to see the number 14 on that line instead. It might be nice if you viewed me as a 14-year-old genius, ready to head to college, but I thought that it would be smart (though not genius) to set the record straight.”
I’d like to take a moment to thank you so much for your extremely helpful posts and for dedicating your precious time to every single person reading this thread! It means so much to me and I’m sure for everyone else!
I just had a question, because I had applied to two schools with a 4 GPA scale, but then I freaked out and called my friend in case it was on a 5 scale. She said that she had put it on a 5 scale, so I applied to my other 8 schools with a 5 scale. It turns out that it was actually on a 4 scale. Should I contact/email each of the 8 schools about my error? Or will they find out anyway from my transcript? My school is rather big as well, Boston Latin School… I’m not sure how to proceed!
In fact, if this parent is any sort of major tycoon or luminary, it might help your admission odds to amend his job situation, but this sort of VIP status is rare.