I submitted my “The Box” before the 1/1 deadline and it says it was received 1/2/2020 on my portal. Will this affect me at all in terms of application competitiveness?
The admissions office was closed for a while over the holidays and reopened on 1/2. If you submitted the materials on time from your end, you should be fine. There likely was a huge dump of materials close to the 1/1 deadline. The admissions staff probably hasn’t started reviewing the batch of applications that came in close to the deadline yet. If you are worried, call or email the admissions office.