<p>This is for all the future stressing applicants who come across this thread but are not convinced:</p>
<p>I messed up on my Harvard application and accidentally put Spanish Listening instead of language for a date that it isn’t even offered, and then proceeded to not send in the scores for any of the future testing dates I had listed. Didn’t try to correct the mistake or anything… but I sure stressed over it. It had NO EFFECT on my application; I was waitlisted from Harvard (applied EA, later waitlisted) and had similar results from other schools I applied to even though I corrected that mistake. (However, my father maintains that I would have been accepted to Harvard otherwise… I just turn around and say HAH!) So don’t worry kiddies, it’ll be all right. For more major mistakes though… read what they say to do on this thread.</p>
<p>Hi guys, sorry to bring back this old thread but it’s been real helpful!
I recently submitted my common app for my early schools, but I realized I forgot to list an additional course that I am taking my second semester senior year - Online U.S. government. my courseload is very rigorous as it is, but I feel like if I do not include this class then colleges will see that I only have 3.5 credits of social studies, when in reality I’ll be graduating with 4. Do you think this is worth emailing my early schools? thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Has your counselor sent in his/or her report yet? If not, ask your counselor to please mention it, then you won’t have to. Otherwise, it’s not a big deal to send in a quick “Oops–I forgot” message. However, wait a little bit before you do and check carefully for OTHER oversights because you really don’t want to have to send more than one 'Oops" message.</p>
<p>One of my activities on the Common App is tennis, and I indicated that I was on the JV team in tenth grade, and for twelfth grade I said “Varsity team (expected).” I am not sure if I will make the team or not. If I do not, do I need to send in a correction even though I indicated it was not for sure?</p>
<p>No, as long as you indicated that varsity won’t be a sure thing, you’re okay. Your admission verdicts will not be predicated on the possibility that you may be on the top tennis team. However, if you find yourself sending any sort of update in the spring for OTHER reasons (e.g., you won a major award or changed a class) then you should mention your tennis status, too. Good luck!</p>
<p>I already sent an email to MIT about a small mistake (wrong number of bags for a fundraiser) and got a reply. I found out 2 days ago that Im Siemens semifinalist and wanna tell them. Is this considered sending an email twice? Is it rude?</p>
<p>Correcting the “small mistake” may have been excessive (I have no way of telling without more info) but the Siemens news is BIG. Congrats! If you are an Early Action candidate to MIT, you should definitely send an update about that now. But if you’re a Regular Decision candidate, you may want to hold off for a bit in case you have additional news (or mistakes!) to report, so that you can try to send everything at once. </p>
<p>The only reason I emailed them about the mistake was because I referenced the correct number in my essay, and I didn’t want there to be a discrepancy in the info. Do you think it was still excessive?</p>
<p>On the Common App, I entered the colleges I’d taken courses from, and only after submitting the app I realized that I shouldn’t have listed any colleges from which I received dual enrollment credit (I submitted the flawed app to Yale too!). Also, I accidentally put that my GPA was weighted out of 5 instead of out of 4 (since my GPA is above 4, I thought it must be weighted out of 5, but turns out its only out of 4 because that’s the baseline and only people who take AP courses have classes weighted out of 5). Plus I indicated National Merit Semifinalist as a National honor rather than State/Regional. I’m worried about the first one most, since the others sound like minor errors that you said to let go, but should I correct my 1st error? And if I’m going to correct my first error, should I correct my others too?</p>
<p>These are all insignificant, including the first. The college folks will figure out what’s really going on from your high school transcript and school profile. So don’t worry. </p>
<p>Thanks so much! I feel much better, and am just glad I caught my mistakes through talking to others before submitting my app to Harvard. But I’m glad that I don’t have to worry even for the others!</p>
<p>On my Dartmouth Supplement, I wrote, “After all a little salt might actually well with chocolate,” but I meant to say, “After all a little salt might actually TASTE well with chocolate”. Should I email them?</p>
<p>My vote would be to leave it alone. The Dartmouth folks will infer what you mean, and busy, rushed admission offiicials may even supply a missing word as they read along, without fully noticing that the word wasn’t actually there. You’ll just call more attention to your error by making them read a separate message about one missing word. Besides, saying " … might taste well with chocolate" doesn’t sound exactly right anyway. You’d probably want to say, " … might taste good with chocolate" or " … might go well with chocolate" or " … might be tasty with chocolate." </p>
<p>But only send a correction if you re-read your essay and find a couple MORE significant mistakes. In that case, send a whole new essay (hard copy) via snail mail and ask if the admission officials would replace the old one with the new. However, I don’t recommend doing this unless you find several errors. </p>
<p>@Sally_Rubenstone Mrs. Rubenstone,
For a leadership position in science olympiad, I put coach instead of co-coach.
Also, I’ve been on JV Academic Team 10th and 11th grade, and varsity 12th grade, but just wrote “Varsity Academic Team” as the activity title by accident, and checked off 10th, 11th, and 12th grades for participation. In awards, however, I put that I got JV Champion 10th and 11th, so I’m not sure if admissions will figure out what I meant.</p>
<p>Are these significant enough to warrant a correction?</p>
<p>@Sally_Rubenstone Mrs. Rubenstone,
I just submitted my application to Rutgers and I made sure to review the essay for formatting and typos. Everything was fine and I went ahead. After submitting, I pressed the review application button and when looking through my essay, all of the quotation marks, ellipses, and apostrophes I used turned into upside down question marks. I have a 3.82 GPA (17 honors/AP courses), strong EC’s, and at 2230 SAT score. Do you think that this odd formatting error that their system made would impact my chance of admission? What should I do to follow up?</p>
<p>@hillaryclinton: Don’t write to your colleges specifically to change these mistakes. This will only highlight the fact that you didn’t proof your application carefully, and the mistakes you made will not ultimately affect your outcome. But here’s what else I suggest:</p>
<p>-If you’re using the Common App, be sure to make corrections now so that the information will be accurate if you’re submitting additional applications later on. </p>
<p>-Send a résumé to each college on your list that will accept one. Here you can expand on your activities a bit more than the very limited application space allows and also clarify your Science Olympiad and Academic Team experiences. As I mentioned above, the mistakes you made (e.g., coach vs co-coach) will have no impact on your admission verdicts, but this is a good way to set the record straight.</p>
<p>-If, somewhere down the road, you have a more important reason for writing to admission officers at the schools that received the erroneous information (e.g., you won a major award or dropped a class), you can mention these corrections in this subsequent note. But don’t send a special letter or message just for this.</p>
<p>And congrats to you and Bill on the new baby. ;-)</p>
<p>@dhizzy: The formatting snafu is probably not unique to your application and thus I suspect that the Rutgers admission folks are used to navigating their way through it … or it may not even appear on the essay version that they see. However, it can be very annoying to read text that is rife with crazy symbols. So I suggest that you snail-mail a hard “clean” copy of your essay to Rutgers and explain why you’re doing it. This will show a little extra effort on your part and, if ALL the essays are arriving at Rutgers with the crazy typos, the admission officials might be grateful to read an essay that doesn’t require a Dick Tracy decoder ring (which you’re surely too young to remember). But don’t worry about this affecting your admission decision, because it won’t. </p>
<p>Sally, today I realized that my school changed the class rank information since I submitted my application more than two weeks ago. My class rank is higher than the one I submitted. I know my official school transcript information should be OK, since my counselor just submitted it last week. Should I contact the college to correct the class rank information? How? The college’s website states that they don’t accept any correction unless they are contact information. Another change is that the counselor I listed in the application is a substitute and the regular counselor will start to work on Nov. 3. Should I also add this change? </p>
<p>@ mnsnow–There’s no need for you to notify your colleges about anything on your application. The admission officials will use the rank from your school’s report. They realize that the self-reported ones aren’t always up-to-date. You don’t have to worry about changing the counselor info either. If the college folks need to contact your counselor, they will figure it out. However, what you probably SHOULD do is to check in with the regular counselor at the end of next week just to make sure that s/he knows where you are in the college process and that all your materials are being sent when and where they should be.</p>