Sorry to comment… again. I just realized there aren’t even 40 weeks in my school year. Should I update colleges about that as well?
@scottt23–Leave this alone, too. In a perfect world, your estimate of time committed to this activity would have been more accurate. But reporting an extra 80 hours and some additional weeks won’t affect your admissions verdicts, and you’ll just annoy admission officials by sending a correction.
BUT … if you were MY child, I’d insist that you correct your karma. 
In other words, spend at least some of those fabricated participation hours doing good deeds for no compensation. One type of good deed you could try would be to wait until you’re in college next fall and then return to the College Confidential discussion forum and answer questions about your experience or provide information about your new school to high school students who are still navigating the admissions maze.
Hi sally! I just realized that I made a huge mistake for one of my activities on the common app and I’m really freaking out. For a volunteer position i have I said that I worked 18 weeks for 5 hours a week every year of high school. I based this off of the letter my coordinator gave me with my hours from the last 2 years. I just realized that the letter was based off my projected hours each year and not the hours I actually worked, and each year there was a few weeks where I couldn’t volunteer either bc I was sick or had school commitments (about 4-5 weeks yearly). Also, I didn’t take into account that I started volunteering later and had less weeks my freshman year (about 11 weeks that year), or that I’ll probably have a few less weeks this year (about 14-16 weeks). I feel terrible that I didn’t realize this earlier, and I don’t want to represent my volunteering inaccurately to colleges, have a situation come up later where they realize my hours aren’t accurate and have more problems arise or have colleges accept me based off an inaccurate perception of who I am (I’ve already been accepted to a few schools). Do you think I should update colleges explaining the situation? Thank you so much for your advice and I’m so sorry for the long post!!
Hi there,
After submitting my UPenn application, I realized that in my “why Penn” essay, I somehow wrote the wrong name for one of the organizations I want to participate in (I wrote Students for Students instead of Students for Sensible Drug Policy). I don’t know how I possibly did this, and apparently what I wrote isn’t even a group at Penn. Is this worth sending a correction in for? If so, what should I say and who should I address it to?
I’m clearly pretty worried about this, so your advice is appreciated. Thank you!
@somewhere2024 -This is not a HUGE error; in fact, it’s not a big deal at all. The colleges will be more concerned with the accuracy of the “5 hours a week” than with the total number of weeks of participation per year. It’s not as if you volunteered for six weeks per year and said it was for 50. Your estimates of weeks per year are close enough, even if not completely accurate, and your intentions were not evil. So let this go. No harm will come from it.
@applicant7715 - Did you mention " Students for Students" just in passing (i.e., as one of several organizations you’d like to join) or did you make a bigger deal about it in your essay, perhaps devoting a paragraph or more to why it’s an endeavor you plan to pursue at Penn?
If the former, let it go. If the latter, just send an email to your regional rep (the staff member who oversees applicants from your high school) and explain what you meant. It’s not anything to worry about and won’t affect your Penn verdict one way or another.
But, before you decide which route to take, keep in mind that many admission officials would fail a “List the student organizations at your college” quiz or at least wouldn’t be able to tell if an organization named in a student essay is actually fact or fiction.
So let this go unless you really shined a spotlight on “Students for Students” in your essay.
@Sally_Rubenstone - I just mentioned it in passing as an example in a broader context, so I think it should be fine.
Thanks so much for your prompt reply, this really helps to soothe my nerves!
@Sally_Rubenstone Hi, I had a question.
So, I said “yes” to the visual arts portfolio question on the common app to a college. However, I have now realized that the graphic design portfolio I intended to submit does not exactly match their portfolio requirements. I design majorly for organizations with very specific guidelines and the designs do no represent my artistic abilities properly (which is what colleges say they want to see). I think it will be better if I do not submit my portfolio. I do not intend to major or minor in design either.
So, how much will saying “yes” and then not submitting a portfolio effect my application? Should I shoot a quick email explaining this somehow?
Thank you sm in advance!
@ksp2206 06 - Changing your mind about your portfolio is not a big deal, but–even so–as a courtesy to admission officials, you should send a short email to every college that received a “YES” from you to the portfolio question. Otherwise, admission folks might be scrambling around to track down a submission that they fear may have gone astray.
Address your email to your regional rep (the admission official who oversees applicants from your high school) with a Cc to the main admissions office address.
Explain very briefly what you’ve already said here … that you primarily design for organizations with specific guidelines and so you realized, as you prepared your portfolio, that it didn’t accurately represent your artistic ability or interests.
Since a portfolio is not required for your acceptance, this change of heart won’t affect your admission verdicts. However, the admission officials are likely to appreciate this clarification, which should reflect well on you.
For one of my activities, I accidentally listed the grade of participation as being “12th” but named the correct dates in the activity description.
What should I do? Is it worth it to call/email admissions offices?
@oxfordreject -I’m not clear on the problem. Did you NOT do this activity in 12th grade or did you do it in 12th grade PLUS other grades? In any case, if you listed the correct dates in the description, you should DEFINITELY leave this alone. Admission officers don’t pay a ton of attention to activity dates. They just want to get a sense of whether an activity has been a long-term, in-depth commitment or perhaps something that was added on at the last minute, when a resume seemed too short. So if the actual dates are SOMEWHERE in your application, you’ll be fine, and you’ll just annoy the admission folks if you send a correction.
Ms. Rubenstone,
Thank you for the reply! I did not do the activity during my senior year. I put down “12th” grade, but it should have been “9th/10th.” Also, it’s a summer activity (explicitly stated as summer), so I’m afraid that they might look at “12th grade” and “summer” and think that I lied. In the activity description box, however, I did list the correct grades of participation next to the activity (only the checkbox was wrong).
The other problem is that the weeks and hours are also wrong. It should say 4hr/7wk but instead reads 1hr/11wk.
@oxfordreject --As confusing as your errors are (at least I’m confused!) no admission official is going to think that you lied, and the differences between what you reported erroneously and what you actually did (and when) will have NO effect at all on your college verdicts. So rather than annoy (and potentially confuse!) admission officials, just leave this alone.
BUT … in the next several weeks, if you find that you have another, more important reason to contact admission offices (e.g., you received new test scores or received a major honor or award), you can write to tell them about that and you can then BRIEFLY mention this correction as well. But don’t write to admission offices NOW to ONLY mention this error … and don’t worry about it either!
Ms. Rubenstone,
After submitting my application, I realized that the courses I mentionned on the common app were wrong. I know it is important enough of a problem to email the admissions office, but my question is: is it TOO big of a problem? I’m scared of being considered as dishonest and that the office to which I sent those wrong classes will get me rejected from all colleges I applied to (I don’t know if this is possible but I’m not taking any chances).
Should I email the admissions office or would it be better to withdraw my application from this university?
Thank you very much.
@yusef123 -Before I answer your question, you must fill in some critical details: HOW wrong was your list of courses on your application? For instance, did you inflate three college-prep-level classes into three AP classes or did you erroneously write down Calculus BC although you’re actually in AB? Or did you use the list of classes from last summer that you’d INTENDED to take even though it included two community college courses that you ultimately weren’t able to get into?
If you send me the list of the classes you are actually taking AND the list of classes you put on your application, I can tell you what to do about it.
If your mistakes seems like honest confusion, then you merely have to email the college to update the list; but if the list is SO incorrect that it can’t be viewed as an honest mistake, then you should probably withdraw. But, before weighing in, I need to know a lot more about what you really did.
@Sally_Rubenstone I was helping a friend of mine who’s already in college to fill his common app to transfer (he doesn’t speak English very well --we are not from an English-speaking country), and since both our tabs were open on the same browser, I got confused and put his classes in my profile.
So basically it only contains his college classes and not my high school classes (sorry, I really don’t feel comfortable sharing those lists in public).
@yusef123 -That’s a very logical explanation. Thank you. The technology of applying to college gets more complex all the time … even when measures are supposedly being taken to make it easier! Thus, it’s not surprising that errors like yours get made, especially when you’re trying to do a good deed!
So all you need to do now is to send an email to any admission office that received the wrong course list and explain your mistake and why you made it … exactly as you’ve done here. Of course, you should also provide the CORRECT list of classes.
Direct your email to your “regional rep”–the admission official who oversees applicants from your high school or from your country. (At some smaller colleges, there is just one admission official who oversees applicants from ALL international students.) Copy the main admission address, too. If you don’t know who your regional rep is and can’t find the information on the website, just send your email to the main admissions address. Put ** “Important course list correction for international freshman applicant” **in the subject line.
Presumably, an accurate list of your classes will appear on the transcript that your counselor sends to your colleges. So, naturally, admission officials will be confused when they notice that the counselor’s list looks nothing like yours.
But once you send this email to clear up the confusion, the matter will be settled, and you have nothing to worry about. It was obviously an honest mistake … in fact, it was the classic “No good deed goes unpunished” situation.
So send the correction and don’t stress over it. If you aren’t admitted to any college that got the wrong class list, it won’t be because of this error.
Hi Sally -
@Tabitha18 kindly referred me in your direction in hopes you would be able to give me a more definitive answer to my question.
We paid for an outside college counselor to help my HS senior navigate the entire college application process, everything from soup to nuts. Although we were peripherally involved, reading essays, giving our opinion, etc, mostly everything was done without our help or input. We have no access to DD’s portals and feel they should be her business. She was denied by her ED1 but has since gotten 4 acceptances. She recently sent out her ED2 and is now working on scholarship applications. Yesterday when she went on to her Common App to grab herCA essay for a scholarship she is working on she noticed the essay prompt was incorrect. So although her essay was submitted correctly the College Counselor did not change or remind my DD to change the essay prompt. DD had originally answered a different prompt, wasn’t happy with her final product and decided to answer a different question, this was all done through the college counselor. Even if this was my DD’s responsibility, the college counselor looked it over with my DD before hitting submit. This is what the college counselor does for a living, shouldn’t they have caught it? When my DD reached out to the counselor today asking them what the repercussions would be the counselors response was “Not to sweat it, college admissions don’t really read the prompts, they read the essays. The prompts are to help the student come up with essay ideas” My opinion is if its visible on the Common App and you put a check next to the prompt you are using, it is important to have the correct prompt marked. Isn’t this showing attention to detail? What are your thoughts, can you shed some light on this? Can/should this be changed if all her Common Apps have been submitted? Thoughts on if this is something we should address with the college counselor or are we making a mountain out a molehill?
Really appreciate your input -
@Mookie44 -If I’m interpreting your question correctly, it looks like your daughter wrote her ED I essay to answer one Common App prompt but then, when it was time to submit an ED II application, she decided to write a brand-new essay that responded to a DIFFERENT prompt. (Right so far?) But … she forgot to untick the little circle that corresponded to the ED I prompt and then tick the little circle that corresponded to the ED II prompt. (Did I get it?)
If that’s the case, and if the new essay clearly doesn’t answer the prompt that your daughter ticked, then she should just email her regional rep at her ED II school (the staff member who oversees applicants from her high school) and explain that, in reviewing her application post-submission, she noticed that the wrong prompt was checked off, and she’s really responding to ___________ [have write out the entire prompt here].
This isn’t a big deal at all and won’t affect her admission verdict. If, however, she feels that her new essay actually could answer more than one prompt (as is sometimes the case) and these include both the original prompt (the one ticked off on the application) and the one she’d intended (but forgot to check), then let it go.
I don’t know if the counselor was at fault for missing the fact that your daughter didn’t change the ticked prompt. Some independent counselors include a review of the actual Common App .pdf as part of their services while others do not. Back in my own private counseling days, I never volunteered to look at an actual application before it was submitted unless the student or parent asked me to (then I did) or unless there was some red flag that caused me to fear that the student had screwed it up.
But if an application review WAS on this counselor’s duty roster, then the counselor made an error by not catching the essay-prompt snafu … albeit a small error. However, the counselor made a greater error by telling you that admission officials don’t read the prompts. The college folks most definitely DO read the selected prompt to judge if the student’s essay has addressed it.
Of course, if an applicant writes a great essay that doesn’t quite directly fit the prompt, it’s not an automatic deal-breaker. The admission readers will probably just say, "Well, that was a terrific essay though it did seem more suited to the ‘overcoming obstacles’ question and not so much to the “challenging a belief question.’”
So I do think that your counselor misguided your daughter by saying not to worry about incorrectly checked prompt and to do nothing.
Instead, just take a close look at the prompt that your daughter SAID she was answering and then revisit the essay she submitted to see if it might actually fit. If not, have her contact her regional rep (as explained above) to correct the mistake and to briefly apologize for it.
Again, this won’t have any impact on your daughter’s ED II outcome, and it’s only a very small black mark against the counselor if you feel that s/he otherwise did a thorough job.
However, if the new essay clearly doesn’t fit the old prompt (or will come across as a much stronger essay if it’s viewed as a response to the prompt that your daughter THOUGHT she was answering), I DO feel you need to tell the counselor that you are not happy with the advice your daughter was given to ignore it. The fact that the counselor missed an easily-overlooked mistake is very understandable, but I don’t like the way the counselor tried to justify it.
@Sally_Rubenstone this is great, appreciate your prompt reply. You answered it all!
Just to clarify, The Common App essay was written and rewritten before any submission. I really mentioned the not getting into ED1 because I was concerned college admission counselors might have used the wrong checked prompt as a reason to eliminate DD’s application. Although not an Ivy, her ED1 is definitely considered one of the high end schools. The essay submitted could fit more than one prompt but it’s upsetting for my daughter and aggravating for us catching this now. We are waiting on ED2 and about 6 other schools.
The college counselor did say it might be best not to reach out to admissions because if they had not caught the error pointing out a mistake would not be in our best interest. We will double check the prompts compared to the essays to confirm it fits with a few but if not I do like the idea of reaching out to our regional rep.
We are really quite fond of the college counselor and she has been nothing but professional and on point through the entire process, another reason we are all disappointed. We planned to continue using this counselor when our next child starts their journey in a few years. Don’t want this oversight to effect our decision but right now I have a pit on my stomach.