Hello Everyone,
As many of you may know, college apps are already turned in; however, I was going through my college application materials and found a few mistakes, and, to be honest, I have not been able to stop stressing over them. First, many schools offer the opportunity to turn in a “Work Resume” in addition to the Common App activities section. Deciding that there were a lot of skills that I had, that I wanted to show on my application, I decided to create a job resume and turn it in. Now, this is where things get tricky. See, the Common App activities section is “complicated” (to put it simply). For instance, when you say you did two hours every week, you aren’t saying that you, every single week, did two hours of work but some weeks you might have done four and others you might have done none (essentially the formatting is weird).
Now for me, I did debate team (our school offers public forum and congressional debate) from my sophomore year to my senior year; however, I did congressional from junior to senior year while doing public forum only in my sophomore year. On my job resume, I said congressional debate from junior to senior year, while on my Common App I just said debate team from sophomore to senior year. However, I didn’t clarify this anywhere in my application.
Additionally, I did science olympiad at my school from my freshman to senior year, but during my freshman year, I was not super involved, meaning that I attended meetings here and there but wasn’t even on the tournament team. On my Common App, I stated that I did science olympiad from freshman year to senior year but on my job resume I said from sophomore to senior, as that is when I really began to pick things up.
When it came to my political volunteering, I began working during my junior year to senior year summer but didn’t really know whether it would be part of senior year or junior year, so on my work resume I said that it was grades 11-12, as I signed up during junior year but on my Common App, I said grade 12 only (this was for midterm elections).
I am super worried because I have read how colleges spot inconstancies and assume that they are lies or exaggerations which are grounds for rejection, but, in reality, it was just a matter of interpreting what are grounds for years of “activity”. Looking back on it, I know I should have been more careful but right now, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want all of my college chances being destroyed because of some differences on my work resume and my Common App activities section. I just wanted to reach out to you guys to ask what you guys think of the situation. Am I overcomplicating the matter? Is this a minor mistake or is it something worth thinking about? Any feedback helps a lot.