<p>GAdaughter applied to 8 schools - 3 of them have lost part of what she submitted. The first university lost her faculty recs, although they were mailed by the GC in the same envelope that also contained the school transcript, and the university got the transcript. The second university recommended faxing tax returns to their Fin.Aid office, and later said they didn't have our returns (the fax machine said they went through to the correct fax number). And then today, she was notified by another school that they still needed her midterm grades, though she'd sent them electronically over a month ago via a window on their website especially for that purpose. I'm not surprised that things get lost - some of these schools may be handing half a million pages of documents each year - but does a 38% glitch rate surprise you?</p>
<p>Nope! Remember that the people opening all those envelopes in January are probably student interns working in the admissions office on a temporary basis, not admissions officers. If it can go wrong, it might go wrong. Just par for the course.</p>
<p>My daughter submitted 7 applications. All were completely submitted between September 7th and October 15th. We have had to re-submit ‘missing’ pieces to four of the seven (57%) admissions department. And one of those, we may have to re-submit the same ‘missing’ documents a second time. (We got a second notice 10-days after the first re-submission was sent. I’m checking daily to see if the second set gets there; otherwise, it will be a third set sent!) </p>
<p>We even put my daughter’s application number on each of the items that were sent by the guidance counsellor. Most of the items in the GC’s packet were marked as received, but not all of them.</p>
<p>So, are the Borrowers branching out into documents in addition to socks???</p>
<p>my worry is lost SS id info and fraud?
How do they protect the kids info/family info with tax info with SS numbers?
College students that work in admissions, access to personal info, birthdates/address/social security #'s.
Any worries there?</p>
<p>My teacher recs were lost from 2 schools.</p>
<p>DD’s guidance office has a numbering system (perhaps similar to treemaven) to verify that THEY have sent materials - in other words, if a school got one piece of mail they got it all. One school reported a missing tchr recommendation ("we never received), if the GC office didn’t have their system, it would have looked like the teacher or the office goofed up. We knew otherwise. </p>
<p>Anyway, our process was relatively painless. DD applied to 12 schools, she gave everything to gc and teachers well in advance, and provided a checklist on top of all her applications to show deadlines and other pertinent information. The guidance secretary was very appreciative as she is the command center for the operation. With over 500 kids applying to an average of 3-4 colleges, and each application having multiple pieces of paper - it is a miracle most of them get where they belong.</p>
<p>8 applications, 1 teachers rec lost, one set of SAT scores didn’t make it right away. (But it was a system wide failure to do with the SAT folk and that particular college - got straightened out.)</p>
<p>D1…six apps…nothing lost. Makes me nervous as we start again with D2. Hmmmm…are the odds against us???</p>
<p>S only applied to 2 schools, D to 1 (early decision).</p>
<p>Nothing was lost.</p>
<p>More recently, S applied to 12 graduate schools. As far as he knows, nothing was lost. He has been admitted to 6 of them, which suggests that all is well.</p>
<p>S applied to 5 or 6 small LAC’s. Nothing was lost.</p>
<p>6-7. Two-three lost my stuff. Not surprising!</p>
<p>11 schools - zero lost. Mostly Common Ap and UC App. Everything online. Enclosed postcard with teacher rec was very useful.</p>
<p>D applied to 3 schools (one doesn’t really count since it was online in a single submission with no attachments or follow-up hard copies of anything). Of the two that count, one lost a letter of recommendation which delayed her EA acceptance by 10 days… a nail-biting 10 days! It did not delay her merit award though! :D</p>
<p>
In my experience, most of the mail is opened by the admission officers over the holiday break. A few students might stick around to work over the holidays, but most student workers aren’t back at school until MLK Day in mid-January. </p>
<p>I’ve always had fun on our mail days…the VP at one school were I worked was constantly scolded by admins for being horribly slow at opening mail. He just couldn’t resist reading everything he was saw. 
I’d think that most schools require student workers to sign a contract that includes an agreement about how they are to handle sensitive personal data.</p>
<p>That’s not a perfect fix, but in addition, many colleges and universities have moved away from using SSNs. The main application has to have the SSN on it to be matched with Financial Aid documents, but much of that is done online now, so student workers don’t really get to see SSNs unless applicants include them on their mailed documents, which many do. </p>
<p>We often open packages to find every single page of inside has the student’s name and SSN on it. I think full name, address, and high school on the top page of a stapled packet is sufficient.</p>
<p>7 applications, nothing lost</p>
<p>5 applications (all to big state U’s), and nothing was lost. Amazing!</p>
<p>Over 20 schools in one year between both kids - one transcript lost at one school.</p>
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<p>I’ve found grad school apps tend to be handled a bit better since they’re usually done by department (who only have to process a few hundred apps) whereas an admissions department will have to handle many thousands.</p>
<p>10 apps–one lost teacher recommendation.</p>
<p>6 applications, nothing lost.</p>