Correcting application errors after submission … or not

<p>After submitting my common application to American University, I realized that I put wrong section in my honors and awards section. I was on Dean’s list two semesters and President’s Scholar one semester. However, in my common application, I put 2 semesters on President’s Scholar and 1 semester on Dean’s list instead. I didn’t mean to be dishonesty. I wonder should I contact with AU admission officer? any suggestion is appreciated…</p>

<p>No, don’t contact AU over that mistake. It wasn’t intentionally deceptive; it won’t affect your admission outcomes; and they’ll have to read it six times, like I did, to see exactly what the error was. ;)</p>

<p>I reported a class of mine was Honor because I thought so since every language class I know at school was Honor. I just switched in the class this semester, but yesterday I found out the class wasn’t Honors. Do I have to report it?</p>

<p>detoidi --Colleges use your official high school transcript to determine course level, not the information an applicant reports. So don’t worry about this. Admission officials aren’t going to think you are intentionally trying to deceive them (though they might do that if you’d inflated EVERY class on your list to a higher level ;)).</p>

<p>I realized I erred in a supplemental essay in which I omitted the preposition ‘to.’ At first, I wrote it twice while revising and accidentally deleted both instead of just one, but that is beside the point. Should I bring this mistake to Harvard’s attention and send in a revised essay answer? Also, will a single mistake such as “intend be” instead of “intend to be” hurt my chances of admission? (I understand that essays should be flawless and errors can only hurt, never help, an applicant; however, I am simply wondering about your feelings regarding an issue such as in this situation). </p>

<p>Thank you very much, </p>

<p>pokersharkaq</p>

<p>^ The above questions regard a transfer applicant.</p>

<p>Hello, Sally.</p>

<p>For Stanford, I just realized that I accidentally checked off the “International Agreement” box, even though I’m a U.S. citizen and applying for financial aid. What should I do in an instance such as this? Should I be panicking? </p>

<p>Thank you so much in advance!</p>

<p>So i’m a transfer and applied to two schools using the common app. for the why you want to transfer i was confused because it said it should be the same for all schools applying to so didn’t customize it for each school but used a generic essay. i only realized after i submitted that you could create alternate common app accounts. should i send in revised essays to admissions or no? they were both due march 1st by the way.</p>

<p>Sally_Rubenstone: I’ve been going through this forum and all your answers have helped me a lot even though I didn’t pose the questions so a huge thank you to all the askers and to you! </p>

<p>If I put Flat 21 instead of Flat 22 as my permanent address (which is entirely different from my mailing address thus giving universities no need to contact me at my home address) should I go ahead and email them about the clarification or is it okay? Also, I forgot to mention my mother’s former surname. Are these two mistakes big deals and could they highly affect my chances with the universities?</p>

<p>I’d really appreciate anybody getting back to me on this asap!</p>

<p>snownyc–Thanks for your kind words about my posts. </p>

<p>It sounds like neither of your mistakes will require any correction at this point. and they will not affect your admissions outcomes. As long as your mailing address isn’t the same as your permanent one, you need not worry about that minor error … at least not NOW. However, once you’ve decided where you are going to enroll, be sure that this university has your correct address.</p>

<p>Thank you so much! I’d been freaking out terribly about this!</p>

<p>You’re welcome. </p>

<p>Good rule of thumb (not just for you but for ALL college applicants):</p>

<p>Many things that students freak out about during the admissions process are not worth freaking out about. </p>

<p>Even the most egregious application errors (e.g., writing “Why I want to attend Wesleyan” on the Wellesley application) are not instant deal-breakers. </p>

<p>Major downturns in grades, felony arrests, or forgetting to hit the “Submit” button until a month after the deadline are all worthy of a freak-out. But minor mistakes like yours will either be overlooked or can be easily corrected with no negative consequences.</p>

<p>First off, thank you so much for answering questions.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>On the Yale supplement they only give you space for 2 SAT scores (1 score being: critical reading, writing, and math). I have taken the SAT 3 times and don’t have room to put one of the full scores, what should I do? As i took each SAT, my score went up so it was well worth it to take 3.</p></li>
<li><p>I made some pretty stupid typos on my common app submission to stanford, specifically these: “I thought had I thrown” instead of “I thought I had thrown”, “spanish” instead of “Spanish”, “advertisment” instead of “advertisement” and “a quite a while ago” instead of “quite a while ago”. I also forgot to capitalize a proper noun in the additional info section for one of my extracurriculars (that was a reoccurring mistake). Should I send them a fixed version of my extra curricular list, extra curricular additional information paragraph, and disciplinary statement (where I fixed the mistakes)?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I sent the common app to both Amherst and Bates with the “a quite a while ago” instead of “quite a while ago” typo and the proper noun not capitalized… I’m not sure how severe that is…</p>

<p>I honestly kept finding typos after I submitted but i have no idea how. My dad proofread, I proofread, my college counselor proofread some of my statements… it is pretty insane.</p>

<p>Here’s a quick question… maybe not…
After I submitted all applications, I realized that there was a mistake on my activity section, one of my EC/Volunteer… it was the first one, volunteering at the hospital, and I only volunteered for 2 years, 10 and 11 grade, but I accidentally put 9~12 grade. Also, the hours I volunteered, it was supposed to be 100 hrs/year, but I put like 200 hrs/year…
man I feel so stupid… so instead of 200 hrs which I actually did, I did like 800 hrs @_@
I already sent emails to all schools, but do you think they will fix this stupid mistake?! I know it’s a major mistake… but I hope it goes okay…</p>

<p>My son submitted the Common Application and several individual applications. He discovered after submitting them all that he forgot to list that he was a National Merit Semifinalist and also received the Bausch + Lomb Honorary Science award. He is applying to MIT, and several other very competitive science/engineering schools. I’m thinking these awards are important enough to notify the schools, and am wondering if you agree. Also, reading about updating the Common App on their website, it’s not clear that you can resubmit to the same schools. It looks like you can update to submit to other schools. Is that right, or can you update for a school to which the application has been submitted? Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.</p>

<p>Important awards?</p>

<p>An important award is a national award that only the applicant (and perhaps a handful of others) won, or a state award that only the applicant won. National merit semifinalist doesn’t come even close to qualifying. Yes, it matters to schools that give merit money to NMSF’s. It doesn’t matter to MIT. (And if he is applying to one or more schools that offer such scholarships, they’ll find out about it without his having to include it on his common app.)</p>

<p>I don’t know how many kids were awarded the B & L honorary science award . . . but if it was hundreds (or thousands), there’s no point in mentioning it.</p>

<p>With regard to updates, if your son has an important update, he needs to contact each school and ask how they want him to submit it.</p>

<p>BotanyBob … if your son’s school is on a semester calendar, then it’s likely that his guidance counselor will be submitting semester grades to all of his colleges within the next few weeks. So you can just ask the counselor to include the B+L award along with other appropriate additions, if any. The counselor can mention the Nat’l Merit status, too, but it’s no biggie at the hyper-competitive schools. The B+L award won’t have admission folks jumping out of their chairs either, but, because only one student per high school can be selected for this honor (while countless can receive NM semifinalist status), it’s worth a mention, especially because the counselor will probably be sending the Mid-Year report soon anyway.</p>

<p>Does a counselor’s addition on the mid-year report carry the same weight as the student sending in information individually?</p>

<p>Also, instead of asking the question in my own thread, I have one about whether an ‘award’ or ‘honor’ is significant. All of my applications were sent in late October-early November. I have just recently sent an update to all colleges changing my second-semester schedule (almost all colleges I called wanted a personal update + mid-year report). </p>

<p>I had been assisting an English professor earlier this year (in the fall) that was included on the application. I have just now confirmed that I am going to be working with a translator (I had worked with her before through my professor, assisting my professor who was helping the translator, and I’ve now gotten this job) as either an editor or co-translator on a couple of different projects (as a result of the intial RA’ing), including one that is a grant from the literature translation institute with whom we are under contract for a short novel. The project is likely to take at least a year and is a ‘real’ academic job (if that makes sense at all). Is that worth an indv. update/ask my gc to include it in the mid-year report?</p>

<p>Thanks-- sorry for the length.</p>

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<p>If it’s just the report of a new activity or an award, then it doesn’t matter who submits the information. But you should aim to consolidate updates so that the colleges aren’t receiving a flurry of emails. (And many students will not have ANY signficant updates to send.)</p>

<p>Your new translation position does sound atypical and thus worth mentioning, whether it comes from you or from the counselor. But since you’ve just sent colleges an update, this might be good info for your counselor to include, if his or her mid-year report is still pending.</p>

<p>That was what I was afraid of with the flurry of updates. I was really surprised when colleges wanted a separate student update for schedule changes, but at least it’s done. Thank ya ma’am! (:</p>