@Wubby13- Definitely don’t send an update for this. The mistake is minuscule and not misleading. If you’d listed your mom as a “Personal * Trainer*,” that might be another story. 
But, in this case, leave things as they are.
Hi @Sally_Rubenstone: my school provided me with a copy of my unofficial transcript early this September, which listed my Latin class as an AP class. As such, I reported that I was taking AP Latin on the Common App. However, I found out today that the Latin teacher had decided to remove the AP designation (making it simply an honors course), and my updated transcript/Q1 grades will reflect that change. Should I email the schools I applied to early to clarify? I don’t want them to see the discrepancy b/w my transcript and self-reported schedule and think I did it on purpose.
@supercilious -This looks like your school administration’s mistake, not yours, and conceivably there are classmates of yours who are in the same situation that you are. So you can try asking your COUNSELOR to explain the error to the colleges. (If s/he hasn’t submitted the School Report to colleges yet, the counselor can add a quick explanation of the discrepancy right there.) But if you don’t want to ask the counselor (or fear that the counselor won’t handle this properly), just send a quick email to admission offices explaining what you’ve said here. It’s not a big deal, and the college folks aren’t likely to suspect you of dishonesty, but you would help clear up potential confusion.
Hi @Sally_Rubenstone
I made two silly mistakes on my application. The first was I said I was an AP Scholar with Honor all four years of high school, when I really should have only said senior year. The second was I accidentally put the wrong year for my APs- I put 2015 instead of 2016. I emailed the three schools I have applied to correcting the first error, and they all responded really favorably and said they would correct the error. However, I found the second error after I sent the first email. I know messing up the year isn’t a big deal, but I’m worried that they’ll notice it now that I already sent an email fixing the AP Scholar mistake. Should I just let this go?
@leesah13 -If you’d asked me in advance, I would have told you NOT to notify colleges about your AP Scholar with Honor error. I promise you that most college folks can’t keep track of those assorted and similar-sounding AP "awards’ and none actually care. All of these accolades simply mean, “I got good scores on a bunch of AP exams,” which admission committees will already know, if you self-reported them on your applications.
However, the fact that you DID write to the colleges already is not a problem, but it also means that you should definitely NOT write again to point out yet another minor mistake. The admission officials probably won’t be paying close enough attention to notice the 2015/16 discrepancy and, even if they do, they’ll see when you took each class on your transcript and will use that as the official version.
Sure, it would have been nice if you’d done it right the first time. But, as I’ve noted on this thread before, any time an applicant sends an email to a college to correct an application mistake that was made as a result of careless proofreading, then there’s a subtext that goes along with the message that says something like this:
I couldn’t be bothered to put extra time into proofing this application before I sent it, so now I’m asking YOU to put in some extra time to read this message and then to make a note in my application folder that a correction has been sent.
That’s not really a concept that most applicants want to convey, eh? However, before you–or anyone else–suffer through sleepless nights or self-flagellation due to some small application screw-ups, keep in mind that it’s highly unlikely that such such inconsequential errors will have a negative impact on your admission verdicts … or on your life beyond.
Thus, if you have applications yet to submit, learn from this experience and proof them more carefully. But, meanwhile, move on and don’t beat yourself up over these particular minuscule errors.
Hey @Sally_Rubenstone,
Yesterday I submitted an app to Juilliard. I’m currently attending community college, however i attended a different community college a few years ago before switching to my current one. And yeah…I forgot to put my old school on the app. 
My friend’s brother said it should be fine considering the type of school Juilliard is weighs heavily on the audition and not much else, but still I’m nervous because I googled what other people have to say about omitting a school on a college app. Some say it’s fine especially if you never obtained a degree yet some say that if the school runs a background check and find you attended a school that you failed to mention that your app can be trashed. I took classes intermittently from fall 2011-spring 2014, often taking one class a semester. Juilliard says they only need official transcripts if invited to the final callbacks which are extremely hard to get invited to. Yet I’m nervous that this could be something that, despite having a good enough audition, they won’t be interested in me as a potential student anymore. Should I contact admissions? If so, what should I tell them?
Okay, so I talked to my brother and he advised me to shoot them an email explaining my error since it’s not exactly a minor one and reading the other pages in this thread helped me decide that it is an error worth contacting admissions about.
I feel really embarrassed for forgetting a detail like that especially since I wrote an essay explaining my poor grades and gaps in schooling.
@Sakura1093 -Your brother is exactly right so make sure he gets an extra big piece of pumpkin pie today. It is not at all a big deal to send a correction to Juilliard explaining that you omitted a community college that you attended initially. It won’t hurt you application in the least to add this info now. But it COULD potentially hurt you to fail to disclose all of your previous colleges, should the omission come to light down the road. (No reason to be embarrassed about the omission either, so send the correction and then put this behind you.)
So I sent in a college app for early action and noticed that I did not finish a sentence under one of my activities for the activities section. It is obvious from the name as well as the one sentence that I did finish in the section what the activity is; however, the error is blatantly obvious. Should I bring it to the college’s attention
@gab0105 -No. Do not bring this to the college’s attention since it is clear what the activity is. Read the bold print in post #444 for more info.
This won’t be a deal-breaker, trust me!
What should I do if I put in less hours and weeks than I actually did for an activity, and how should I explain that I realized this only recently when I submitted my application a few weeks ago? Also, what do I do if there’s a couple more activities that I had forgotten to add to my application (I already listed my most important and crucial ones, but I don’t know if I should tell them about some activities I may have mis-categorized as something else or had forgotten until recently)?
@IdeaGenerator -What’s the discrepancy … did you write down 2 hours when you meant 20 or was the difference more along the lines 6 vs. 8? You really don’t want to bother colleges with such changes unless they’re egregious. I would also suggest that you NOT add activities after an application has been submitted. If the activity was truly important to you, it probably wouldn’t have been forgotten in the first place. What you CAN do, however, is to send a snail-mail copy of your resume to admission offices, and you can add the missing endeavors to your resume.
The discrepancy is stuff like putting 17 hours and 14 weeks when I meant 22 hours and 20 weeks. Also, for my resume, how should I do it if the ones that I’m adding is stuff like a summer camp that I had mis-categorized as something else, and do you have any good suggestions for a template I should follow (a link would be very appreciated) and know if I should still put down the activities that I already told them about?
hello sally,
My daughter had a long conversation with her IB Art teacher, her counselor and the IB coordinator and finally came up with the conclusion to allow my daughter to switch from IB Art HL to IB Art SL by her 2nd semester as a senior.
Some were due to her personal reasons but the main reason revolved around her desire to spend more time in pursuing her independent projects that she’s been wanting to work on for a long time. She also wanted to be involved in the industry more, which meant spending more time outside of school pursing her artistic career.
I think the problem is, before making this decision, she had already put down HL for her Common App and she, as of a few weeks agos, sent her application to one of her universities. I’ve heard stories of students getting revoked because of major grade drops (multiple C’s, D’s and even worse F’s) but I’m wondering if switching from HL to SL would really make the admissions department consider rescinding someone’s application?
Should she be worried or is this not that big of a deal?
@IdeaGenerator -Definitely do not send a correction for that discrepancy. It’s much too small. And your resume should include all your significant activities, including those already on your application.
For high school students applying to college (but not for college students applying for jobs), I recommend what I call the “Annotated Activity List” rather than just a standard resume. Here’s an explanation of what I mean, courtesy of my College Confidential partner, Dave Berry, and his wonderful “Admit This!” blog: http://www.collegeconfidential.com/admit/annotate-your-activities-list/
However, even with the annotations, keep your list to two pages maximum.
@whatsgoingonn - I doubt it will be a big deal … or ANY sort of deal … that your daughter switched from HL to SL IB Art. BUT … she should definitely make the change on her Common App AND also send an explanatory email to any university to which she has already applied. She can tell the college folks just what you’ve said here … i.e., her reasons for wanting extra time. And if she can include a picture or two of her independent art work right in the email, that would be a nice touch.
College admission officials do not like to see final transcripts that don’t match the information on the application, and I’ve seen acceptances revoked when there are discrepancies. Although this particular discrepancy is probably too small to warrant any action, I strongly advise your daughter to alert the university she’s already applied to, just to be on the safe side.
@Sally_Rubenstone Thank you for the explanation. I should’ve mentioned that this decision isn’t entirely final and we’re still considering alternatives. Should there be a situation where she can’t decide before notice, would you recommend her sending the e-mail after she gets a notice regarding her application status or before?
Also, regarding the change on Common App, is there a space where she could explain her reasons as to why the sudden change from HL to SL during her senior year?
@whatsgoingonn–If the decision isn’t final, your daughter should notify the college she’s already applied to anyway and explain that she’s considering a change for January. College folks can get ornery if they admit a student with one course roster in front of them only to learn that the student has decided to downgrade, even slightly, to another one. So let that school know immediately that the change is under consideration and see if there’s a response that might be viewed as negative.
OR … PLAN B:
If your daughter gets admitted in the next couple weeks, she can then write to her admissions rep at that college and say, “I’m contemplating this change. Will it affect my affirmative decision?” And if the college rep writes back and says yes, then your daughter will have to stick with her current schedule. That probably WON’T happen if your daughter explains her plans well since the potential change is a pretty small one, but it MIGHT.
Re the Common App explanation: Use the “Additional Information” section.
@Sally_Rubenstone thanks for another clear explanation. I have to ask though, with your experience as an admissions expert, do you personally recommend plan A or plan B?
@whatsgoingonn -I guess I would recommend B, as long as your daughter is okay with sticking with the HL class if the college that admits her says that she should. This is a very busy time in most admission offices as the college folks rush to finalize Early Action/Decision verdicts. So it might make sense for your daughter to lay low until she has her decision, IF she is okay with staying in HL, as needed and IF she can wait to decide about that until after she hears from the college.