Anyone here have a story of making silly mistakes on college apps and still getting into the schools that you applied to? I guess I’m in need of reassurance right now. I made silly mistakes such as leaving out a letter in two words in my common app & I’m pretty worried. I have good stats (2220 sat, 3.95 UW) for the schools I’m applying to and decent EC’s. I’ve sent out emails to the colleges I applied to about the minor errors, just so they know I care. Hopefully I can still get in to the colleges I applied to! (GT, Emory, Boston College, NYU, Northeastern)
I wrote the AP testing dates on the Common App completely wrong. Instead of writing 5/2013 or 5/2014, every single one of them had 6/2013 or 6/2014…oops. And I had 10 chances to notice this! In my essays, I capitalized “Electrical Engineering” but not the “computer science” following it. Fortunately, I still got in after I emailed them with a correction.
You really don’t have to worry, especially since you’ve notified them of it. They wouldn’t penalize you over a spelling mistake, but I understand that feeling after the realization. Good luck!
I made an almost very catastrophic mistake! I mixed up one of the numbers on my social security number. I noticed about a week and a half later and freaked out, emailed the four schools I had applied to, and they were all really nice about it. One of them took a while getting back to me and another asked me to send them a picture of my social security card in order to make the change, but it was all good and I got into three of them and deferred from one!
FWIW, my D applied ED1 to Pomona. After we submitted her app, I noticed two typos. One in Honors and Awards and one in Extracurriculars/Actitivies. One was a word with an extra letter and one was a word that was missing a letter. Anyway, she got in ED to Pomona. I hope that reassures you.
Neighbor showed me her kid’s essays for a top 10 school after they were already submitted. I noticed two typos, one in the common app essay and one in the sup essay. Kid was accepted early. They were mistakes like the ones you mentioned. Big mistakes would be, as TomSr said, writing the wrong college’s name.
I spelled synagogue wrong TWICE on my app for Brandeis, a very Jewish school, as an applicant with tons of Jewish-related community service experience… I still got in. One or two typos won’t kill you. A paper riddled with errors, or an egregious error like getting the school’s name wrong, will raise attention.
I forgot to proofread one of my UC personal statements after copying and pasting from the word doc so i ended up submitting an essay with lots of symbols and weird formatting errors. Still got accepted regents at UC Berkeley and Davis and regular admit at San Diego.
@whatisgoingonmid did you end up getting into the schools? Did you send a new version to each school? Was this before or ater the due date? Thanks for letting us know how things turned out for you!
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