I’m a student applying to many prestigious colleges, and I made a pretty embarrassing error on my Common Application.
On the version I sent to Harvard, NYU, and Columbia, there is one activity for which the name field is not complete, with two words mashed together. It says “Grade Rep, Minister of Publicity; RHHSdent council” This is supposed to mention my involvement in the student government at my school, but it just looks unprofessional. Even worse, the “details, honors and accomplishments” section contains a very eloquent “asdfasdf”.
Do you think this will seriously hurt my chances?
Has anyone here gotten into an elite school with embarrassing typos and errors?
Is there anything I can do to rectify this mistake?
Help!
Any and all comments are greatly appreciated.
If you don’t have any other errors of that type, I don’t think it will hurt you much, but what I would do is email those colleges stating our concern and asking them directly if it’s a problem.
Good luck! I’m applying to NYU as well (Abu Dhabi)!
I don’t think it will hurt you in the fact that it looks unprofessional if you don’t have similar errors anywhere else in your application. However, reading your post, I became very confused as to what your typos actually meant. I have a felling that an admissions officer might have trouble understanding what exactly you’re saying about your extracurricular activity, and that might actually be a problem. But don’t worry! It’s an easy fix. Email the colleges explaining that you made a typo and provide a corrected version of the name of the activity and the corresponding details, and they should simply add it to your file.
A mistake is a mistake. If you don’t catch it before pulling the trigger on a very important event, it’s done and there isn’t anything you can do about it. You might think it shows some kind of …something… to catch it after the fact, but it doesn’t so best to just let it lie.
In real life, the patient will be dead, the batch of pharmaceuticals will be contaminated, the building will be compromised, the car will be wrecked, the deal will be queered, the report will be in error.
^ Dude, calm down. OP forgot to replace his filler statement with a sentence that explained his activities. Not the end of the world.
You’ll be fine. I don’t know if I’d even contact the admissions office unless the EC in question was foremost on your list, because they probably won’t even notice (or care all that much). The clam fart guy still got in and you can too.
There’s nothing to calm down about. I’m not the one who gets excited about this. It is, however, about the hundredth post I’ve seen asking about mistakes.
If you have strong feelings about where you go to college, than the application ranks among one of the most important things you would ever do. Consequently, I’d recommend checking not once, but maybe twice or three times before you pull the trigger.
If, after that, you still made a mistake, then I would ask yourself the following questions
Did you forget something that is absolutely REQUIRED? You have to fix it.
Is it a mistake that could be construed in any way as a deliberate attempt to deceive? If so, then you have to fix it.
Is it an OMISSION error? Wouldn’t fix it. How important can it be if you forgot it?
Is it a detail? Wouldn’t fix it. Doing so only draws attention to the error in the first place.
Elite schools are very strict when it comes to grammar/construction of sentences. If you have mistakes, then you can’t do something about it. At least you’ve learned from it, the next thing to do is proof read your application and make it perfectly done However, if your mistakes are not that huge, then just calm down and relax.
