<p>A few grad schools I am applying to (for applied math) have early-mid January deadlines. Should I wait to send my official transcript until my fall grades are in or is waiting that late to submit them bad?</p>
<p>Don’t wait - submit your transcript (and your application) early. Once you get a new transcript, if it’s excellent, you can submit it as an update to your application if you wish.</p>
<p>Okay thank you for the response! If the submission date is for mid-January typically how early should I submit the application?</p>
<p>Assuming that the program is not rolling admissions, it doesn’t make a difference as far as admissibility when you submit it. So let’s say the deadline is January 15. Assuming no rolling admissions, three people who submit December 15, January 1, and January 14 all have the same chances of admission holding all other things constant. The professors aren’t looking at the applications until January 16 at the earliest anyway (and, more realistically, probably early February).</p>
<p>When I say submit it early it is more for the sake of avoiding problems - like a transcript that gets lost in the mail, Internet problems on the eve of the 15th, a recommender who forgets to upload his letter, etc. If you plan to do your submission earlier, you can deal with these problems as they arise without panic. Also remember that at the same university many programs may share application deadlines. For example, at my alma mater all of the doctoral programs had the same December 15 due date. So the systems were completely overloaded from about December 13 to December 15, which led to slow loading and system crashes. But if you submitted on December 10, let’s say, you could probably avoid a lot of those problems.</p>
<p>Okay I understand what you mean now. Thank you for the great advice! Will hopefully be applying soon!</p>