Hi, I’m a bit worried about my prep school admissions. For students or anyone who knows anything about this: is there supposed to be something like a “Congratulations! Your application has been submitted!” Screen when you submit your application on gateway to prep schools or any of the private application websites for those schools?
As for the school website checklists(examples: Lawrenceville) does everything have to be checked off for your application to be considered and or submitted? I had an interview a while ago but it hasn’t been checked off yet on my list.
The schools are slammed right now and slow to update everything. Wait a week or two until you start to panic.
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Not sure how you define “a while ago” but provided you did it before January 15 and it has been 10+ days past admissions deadline you should contact the school to ask why it is not updated. No one here can give you that answer. It could be a simple oversight or it may not be. Do you want to risk your application sitting in the incomplete pile? It may look incomplete on your end but they may have every box checked off on their end, but you will not know without asking THEM not people here.
I’m going to disagree with @Pharmingturtles. I think the general standard is that it takes a couple of weeks for all the pieces to shake out. I’d give it another week, and then if you still don’t see confirmation on the portal or via an email, drop a quick email to your AO saying “Hi! I just wanted to confirm that you have everything you need from me.” Easy. No biggie.
As @SweetBoy1 points out --it’s a really busy time right now for these admissions offices, so I wouldn’t worry at all yet.
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@Pharmingturtles I dont know if you realize this but you say “no one here can give you that answer” for almost any reply. And also replying to this thread I dont think you need to email them, my Lawrenceville interview took a while to check off.
As I mentioned I have no idea what was meant by when OP said the interview was a while ago. That could mean it was November or that could mean 7 days ago. Perhaps if the OP defined “a while ago” that changes whether this is a backlog situation or a potential miss situation. My son’s application for a school showed something missing on his portal though it had shown downloaded by the school on gateway. We gave it a week before contacting the school which they told us right then and there that they did in fact have it, that the portal update was missed, and they would update his portal. It could be something as simple as this.
If OP waited until the around the deadline to do an interview, yes, things can be just lagging behind but if this was truly something done some time ago, then the potential for this piece to have been overlooked is real and the longer you wait before it can be investigated the longer your app sits in the incomplete pile. Maybe the interviewer never turned in the record, maybe it got recorded incorrectly in another student’s file. Anything is possible if it has truly been “a while ago”.
But by all means, take the advice of people telling you to wait around if you truly did your interview “a while ago” and want to risk your application. But if you did your interview last week or even this month or around Christening, yes, you’re likely going to be waiting through the backlog for that to be updated.
Because no one can tell OP why the interview isn’t checked off. You and OP use vague words such as “a while ago” and “a long time”. Why don’t you tell OP how long exactly it took before your interview was checked off. I provided exact number of days vs vague answers. That is why I say no one can tell you. A long time to you may be a week but to the OP it may be a month. For all we know the OP did the interview in September. You do not understand that your answer in no more helpful by saying “it took a long time”.
Additionally no one can answer for why the school has not checked off the interview other than the school. Again that is why I say no one can answer. It really is that simple. Provide detailed information when asking a question and people can provide guidance but the truth is, if you are questioning what is going on with pieces of your application not appearing, the only people who can answer that is the school.
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We can agree to disagree.
That’s what makes the world interesting.
We can have very different approaches.
I feel super solid in the advice I share here now being in our 4th application cycle and 30 applications across 4 students. So I’m not sharing based on just opinion — it’s experience. Schools are swamped now and if something is missing despite having submitted it, Feb 1 is plenty of time to track things down. Truly.
But if that’s stressful for someone, of course, AO is only a quick email away.
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I don’t know how things have changed in the past four years, but I received this email back when I applied:
I’d recommend waiting at least two weeks before you reach out to the admissions office; I’m currently applying to college, and my counselor told me that since documents are coming in right now at a really rapid pace, you should give them some time to process everything. I imagine much is the same for independent school admissions.
Yeah I think the website might be lagging a bit, my interviewer mentioned something about it so I guess it could just be a problem on my side. I think I’ll try contacting them again
Yeah, I think sending them an email would probably be the best way to go right now. I’m just worried I might be blocked by them or something like that because I did send them an email over a week ago however no one has replied yet.
Okay! Thank you, I think it’s probably just taking a while to update given the time I did the interview.
Yes, thanks for responding. I’ll take everything into consideration.
