just made a really stupid, careless mistake...GAAAH!!!

Parents Forum
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<p>I decided to contact each school on my son's list to ask them a FAFSA question. I just heard back from a financial aid officer at Haverford and I had asked her about Pomona!! How could I be so careless? I just feel terrible!</p>

<p>This is a warning about how easy it can be to do this. I've read about kids sending stuff to the wrong college and thought, "How could that happen?" one momentary lapse and two college names right next to each other on a list is how. I know my son isn't even a statistic to these colleges yet, but I'm reallt upset with myself.</p>

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<p>Don't worry. It will get worse...</p>

<p>The good news is that the colleges don't hold much of what we parents do against our kids. Heck, the kids probably get sympathy points.</p>

<p>What is more important is that our kids get the names right.</p>

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<p>Haha! New Yorkers have coined, I believe, the appropriate term for such unfortunate circumstances: Fuggedaboudit!</p>

<p>Seriously. It would be a naive FA officer who believes students apply to only one college.</p>

<p>Just apologize and blame it on a gray [read "senior"] moment. ;)</p>

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<p>I laugh stuff like this off. It's no secret that your children are applying to many schools. There are bound to be a few mix ups. When I see another college mentioned in recommendations or emails, I have no problem with it at all. </p>

<p>In the instructions for our "open" essay question, we even say "if an essay question for another college piqued your interest, feel free to submit your reponse to that question." Plenty of students will tell us "This is in response to ____'s essay question."</p>

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<p>Thanks, this does make me feel better. It seems like my life is one long senior moment these days. I am seriously going to be more careful in future, but this was a wake-up call.</p>

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<p>Bethievt, don't sweat this. Mine once told a newspaper reporter (major media) that Harvard was her first choice. Naturally, the reporter used the quote, and it appeared in everything, making subsequent articles useless for distribution to coaches at other schools. But even worse, she couldn't know which head coaches might catch the coverage. What a train wreck... </p>

<p>Surely the financial aid officer at Haverford is used to this - I'm sure everything will work out o.k.</p>

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<p>Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it. I actually think the application process would benefit greatly if more students read a book like "The Gatekeepers" and approached the whole thing like the game it is.</p>

<p>Your little mistake does highlight an important lesson when it comes time to submit applications: have multiple sets of eyes proofread for mistakes.</p>

<p>Also, parents contacting the financial aid office with questions is OK. But, at colleges like Haverford or Pomona, parents should have ZERO contact with the admissions office. These top schools are looking for kids who handle their own communications, questions, etc. Plus, it's great practice for kids, for whom the process is often their first experience with the kind of businesslike "informational sell" that they will need to use for job hunting later in life.</p>

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<p>interesteddad,</p>

<p>One way to handle contact with admissions offices is to do it by phone and NOT ever tell them your name. I don't think any admissions offices are using voice print analysis to match voices to parent names....:)</p>

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<p>Also, you're not applying for college, yuor kid is. Your mistake isn't his.</p>

<p>For what it's worth, I wrote one essay and used it for multiple schools on my transfer application. On the copy I sent to Marquette, I had Memphis in the text. On the copy I sent to Memphis I had "________" and no school name. Both accepted me (I went to Old Dominion anyways.)</p>

<p>636</p>

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<p>Well, what really irked my daughter was when she discovered that a teacher wrote a recommendation to Boston U. saying what an asset my daughter would be to "Boston College". The thing is, my daughter never applied or even considered applying to BC. </p>

<p>I wonder how many Haverford applications come with recommendations mentioning "Harvard" just because the teachers can't get the name right? I hope the ad coms realize that when the mistake is on a rec, sometimes the confusion has absolutely nothing to do with the kid who is applying -- I'll bet teachers who write a lot of recs probably also get confused about which kid is applying where as well.</p>

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<p>Actually, adcoms are pretty generous regarding GC and school mistakes.</p>

<p>Schools often blow the deadlines for getting stuff in. As long as the materials are in the file by reading time, no problem (at least at most places)</p>

<p>In my past dealings with admissions professionals, they are just as human as we are :) , and know human foibles. I bet some of our mistakes actually lighten up their day.</p>

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<p>
[QUOTE]
I hope the ad coms realize that when the mistake is on a rec, sometimes the confusion has absolutely nothing to do with the kid who is applying -- I'll bet teachers who write a lot of recs probably also get confused about which kid is applying where as well.

[/QUOTE]
This is the most common mistake and we don't ding a student because of it.</p>

<p>For me, the ONLY time when mention of a different school is a negative is when a student's essay to UVA is about how perfect the school is because of it's bustling urban environment, close proximity to the ocean and fantastic ____ department (when said department doesn't exist here.</p>

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<p>Well my daughter kind of did that too, but she got in anyway..... On the "why Barnard" essay she mentioned her interest in studying psycholinguistics together with slavic languages. She had researched the Barnard/Columbia slavic languages department in depth, and it just never occured to her (or me) that a world class research university wouldn't also have a linguistics department. Ooops. We only discovered the lack of a linguistics department or major after she was admitted and had accepted, and it came time to start choosing courses. Great story about the precipitous demise of the Columbia linguistics department in the late 1980's... but at the time she applied, she didn't know it.</p>

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<p>ID, I think it's ok for parents to do a phone contact, especially if time zones make it impossible for the student to get home from school before the admissions office closes for the day.</p>

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<p>Sure. If you don't mind taking away an opportunity for the student to make an impression with a nicely written professional e-mail request.</p>

<p>Applicants have limited opportunities to get name-recognition in the admissions office. Legitimate informational requests provide an excellent opportunity. When Mom calls, that opportunity is lost.</p>

<p>I'm only going by what I have observed at my daugher's school. They welcome parental interest, but send a very clear message that they expect the young adults to handle their own business -- both during the admissions process and during college itself.</p>

<p>IMO, parents should stay out of sight. Instead of making a phone call, help the student learn how to write a concise, professional e-mail introduction and information request.</p>

<p>We broke our rule one time. My wife was up against a 30-day advance purchase deadline on airplane tickets for the admitted students weekend and had to buy the ticket that day, so she called to confirm the dates.</p>

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<p>Bethie, </p>

<p>Please rest assured that this faux pas is NOT a problem at all. It may feel ;like it is, to you, but it is not. It is common. You were just speaking to the financial aid office and they know applicants are applying to many schools and in fact, even see that ON the FAFSA forms that are submitted. Also, at leat at our house, the parents took care of the financial aid matters.This wasn't exactly an interview or essay asking your son, "why do you want to go to Haverford??" If he talked about Pomona, then THAT would be a problem :eek:</p>

<p>If it makes you feel any better, I can think of two mistakes along these lines that occured in my D's case. One was by one of her teacher rec writers. He wrote one narrative that got sent with his form to each college but on his Word Processor, he changed each one and substituted all the times he mentioned the college name, so to individualize the letter somewhat. The first version he wrote was to Yale as she applied EA. We have a copy of the letter that was sent to all the colleges and discovered after the fact that he had changed the college name four of the times it was mentioned in the body of the letter except forgot to the fifth time, so if the letter mentioned, say, Brown, throughout, the final lines mentioned Yale, every time. Didn't seem to matter as she got in everywhere, and one waitlist, BUT didn't get into Yale. Kinda a funny twist there. </p>

<p>One other tiny mistake was in an email to a coach, which was fairly similar from coach to coach, discussing her background and inquiring and showing interest in trying to meet up when on a campus visit, she pasted the text of an email to another coach and worked off it and made some changes, since a good section of it was the same. She discovered later that she forgot to change the name of the school in one paragraph. She wrote a second note explaining her mistake. Wasn't such a big deal, I do not think. </p>

<p>I agree with Dean J that the MUCH bigger error which is not the same as these sort of "typo" type mistakes, are those who do not write or talk very specifically in their Why X College statements about a particular school and make that part rather generic. BIG mistake. Also, mentioning another school in that context would not be cool. It would also make it even more painfully obvious that the Why X College statement was quite generic.</p>

<p>InterestedDad, while my kids did all their own calls or emails with professors, adcoms, interviewers, coaches, etc......I think it is totally fine for a parent to make a secretarial type call to a financial aid office or to a receptionist in the admissions office or another department, to clarify a form, an appointment, and that sort of thing. My kids were NEVER home between the hours of 7:30 AM until later at night and so making a call during the business day was extremely difficult. I didn't talk to any adcoms. Any calls I made were pure logistics with secretarial staff. I may have lined up the audition appointments, the college tour reservation, requested a mailing, etc. My kids did lots of direct contact with those people who mattered over things that truly matttered.</p>

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<p>In our case, our kid spoke to adcom and corresponded with them. We never met any admission officer and nver emailed them. This was ki's job. </p>

<p>However, we always talked to financial aid office in each of the Ivy leauge school. We wer very concerned with aid part. We let them know what our family income was and have a frank discussion about what were our limitations and how much we were expecting based on preliminary estimates. In our case we did get full aid in so many places.</p>

<p>Do not worry about what you did, it happens.</p>

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<p>AdmissionsDaniel, who posts on the JHU forum (and I hope I am not badly misquoting him :) ) said that they frequently get recs/essays which have the wrong college's name in them. He says they don't mind at all; it's nothing.</p>

<p>What they <em>do</em> mind is when the student gets Johns Hopkins University's name wrong - John Hopkins, Jon Hopkins, John's Hopkins etc. etc. They are a bit unique in their ripeness for this kind of mistake, I'd have to guess.</p>

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<p>Bethievt,
Just goes to show that Haverford is responsive! ;)</p>

<p>After D was admitted in March of 2004, she had a few questions...then we (as parents) inquired about their protocol for stafford loans...Haverford responses were always quick.</p>

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<p>Another good reason for parents to refrain from contacting schools is that we can get too excited and forget that WE are not applying to college.</p>

<p>It's hard for the kid to get excited and/or motivated if the parents are taking the lead.</p>

<p>Sorry to say I learned this the hard way!</p>