<p>two days ago i submitted my common app to williams. however, just yesterday i realized that i did a reaaallly stupid mistake in my common app! i did not put my extracurriculars in the order of interest, but just very randomly!! i also wrote hours per day instead of hours per week for my job which now only looks 5 instead of 25! what should i do? i sent the same application to dartmouth.. any ideas??</p>
<p>btw, i am sending in another sheet listing my curriculars, but they are again not in the order of interest but listed according to the time i joined them. i'll be very glad if you can give me some ideas.. thanks!</p>
<p>I'm not sure why you are sending another list with the dates you joined things. If it hasn't gone out, stop and think what you want to do. </p>
<p>If you are applying regular decision, you have a few weeks in which to correct your mistakes. Do it wisely and carefully. Don't wait until the last minute, of course.</p>
<p>I think you should very carefully craft a letter to the admissions people, enclosing the correct information. Redo the whole page in a way that will allow a clerk to substitute the corrected page for the one with the mistakes, which will give the Admissions Committee a correct copy from which to work (having to refer back and forth between a correct copy and one with mistakes would be annoying and would just highlight the problem)-- better yet, send a copy of a whole Common Application, putting a Post-It on it indicating that it is a corrected copy. Apologize in your letter but take a light tone (I mean don't go overboard or act as though it is the end of the world or you are an anxiety-ridden wreck). Use this as an opportunity to reiterate at the bottom of the letter how much you want to attend the college. Have someone you trust proofread and critique the letter before you send it.</p>
<p>I've worked in several offices that have a two-reader rule: at lest two people have to read anything before it is sent. It's a very good rule. I'd advise you to use it so that you don't compound your mistake -- you'd be amazed at how often people make more mistakes when they are trying to correct an initial mistake.</p>
<p>I don't think so, especially if you are clear that you are sending it because the online version had an error that you are correcting. Some schools actually advise applicants who apply online to send in a paper copy as a back-up -- that's a different matter, of course, but it indicates to me that schools can handle the extra paper. I also have heard stories of students who submitted things online and it turned out that they were garbled in the transmission so the applicants sent corrected paper copies with a note or letter. </p>
<p>If you are going to do this, try to do it next week so that at least it will look like you were right on top of it. Do get another reader, though, and be very careful not to make more mistakes (or the whole incident is going to look terrible and is likely to start counting against you).</p>
<p>And if you use the paper copy, you'll find that you can fit a lot more characters into the activities box than you can online, so you may be able to improve your content as well as correct your mistakes. Just be sure to have a careful, informed second reader.</p>