We thought the same thing - we emailed the admissions office and they said the opposite! Once you hit the submit button, the admissions office has it - they told us not to resubmit the essay with any edits but if you have anything new, send a separate email to their office. Hope we got the right information from whoever was responding to us.
@25Raider @damedolla1234 Thatâs terrifying to me. Admissions told my daughter EXACTLY the opposite: that not only could you make changes up to the 15th, but in fact it was a big misconception that it helps to turn them in early because they wonât be looked at before then. Iâm stunned right now. My daughter submitted a very incomplete rough draft early on because of what he said.
@25Raider @damedolla1234 @WhimsicalSquid
On the site where you submit the essay, there is a note at the bottom(under the essay box) that says âthis page will time-out after 15 minutes. Clicking âSubmitâ will save your work and reset the clock.â Based on this, you should be able to edit your essay up until 11:59 tomorrow(April 15th), and not worry about admissions seeing any earlier drafts. I havenât spoken to any counselors on this topic, but hopefully that gives some clarification from the website.
Can someone please call them tomorrow to clarify if editing your additional info and pressing submit sends it to them each time or if it just saves your essay. I canât even count how many times Iâve edited that box because I found some error or thought to rewrite something/add on. I really donât want them to see all my drafts because then It would look like I spammed them.
I feel like if they wanted us to not submit it multiple times to save it that they would have clarified this on the application portal or made it very clear somewhere.
@ryebread01 It also says, âSelect or modify your waitlist option below by 11:59 PM PDT on April 15, 2020,â which we took to mean that you could modify your waitlist essay; but now that Iâm second-guessing, it could just mean modifying the waitlist option of yes/no. Since it does let you modify the essay, I think most people would infer that you wouldnât have to worry about it being read before the 15th! But @25Raiderâs comment has me extremely nervous.
@10s4life Guru, can you help with anything official since weâve gotten conflicting answers from admissions? The question is whether they ever read submitted essays before the 15th (even though people enter rough drafts), and one poster was told that they do.
donât worry about it. ive updated my status probably 30+ times and i get the same email every time
â Thank you! You are now on UCLAâs waitlist for Fall Quarter 2020 applicants.
You can get answers to questions about the waitlist status and procedures by logging into the Decision Site and reviewing the frequently asked questions. You may also update your waitlist status/information any time before 11:59 PM on April 15, 2020.â
the part that says âyou may update your waitlist status/INFORMATION âŠâ imo proves that you can update it. Iâve read this email countless times and Iâm sure itâll be just fine.
@gogauchos2024 We all agree that that makes sense, I hope youâre right, and when all is said and done I think you probably are. And the word âinformationâ does help. What has us worried is that somebody was actually told otherwise by admissions.
I read that post. I wouldnât be completely surprised if it was actually for UC Berkeley, since Iâm pretty sure they only allow you to submit once. It would be easy to assume that all UCs do it the same way. For my sake, I hope itâs the âupdatableâ version to, as the first draft I turned in was 1000 characters, because I misread 7000 through my own tears ;).
On the portal itself (i just checked) it also says âeditâ next to submit.
@25Raider The portal says âSelect or modify your waitlist option below by 11:59 PM PDT on April 15, 2020â
if youâve already submitted it, thereâs about 200 characters displayed, and then a link to open the text box that says âview/EDITâ in blue. which i think is another argument in favor that you can edit it 
Great point. Davis isnât modifiable either. @25Raider, any chance your UCâs got mixed up?
I feel that! My daughter flipped that - she wrote 700 words for a supplement that was 700 characters!?
My son was a waitlist admit last year. I posted back on page 3 of this thread.
@clbfan, last year waitlist admits were given the same housing guarantee as regular admits. Roommate requests are never guaranteed, but they do their best to accommodate. (My sonâs request was accommodated.)
@WhimsicalSquid, they do tell you when they are done selecting from the waitlist; last year this happened around mid-June. As for submitting the response earlier/later, my son turned his in around 9pm on 4/15 last year, so in his case it did not make a difference.
@firmament2x, there was a 2023 waitlist thread. If you go through that, I think you will find several days when people were accepted.
We are not dealing with UCB - my son did not apply to UCB. We read the waitlist portal the same way you all did but the admissions office did respond telling us otherwise. So we followed their instructions and sent an updated essay separately via email (not thru the waitlist portal) explaining the situation. Like I said, whoever was responding from the admissions office to our inquiry may have been misinformed. And in any case that waitlist portal needs to be clarified for the future. The problem is the submit function to accept the waitlist offer and draft/save the essay are combined - they need to separate those two items.
Sorry to ask yet another question but Iâm just getting a little anxious leading up to the deadline: Did the majority of you write close to 7,000 characters? Because I wrote a small essay that ended up being almost to the limit, and I am unsure if that was the best decision, or if I should have written one really concise, shorter paragraph instead.
For those who may know admissions better than me, do they tend to only read the first paragraph and skim the rest? Or will they truly read through each essay/writing? Iâm just trying to figure out whether I should reformat my essay, or stop worrying and leave it as is.
I wrote a decently sized essay too. But I structured it in such a way that I was able to cover points on everything, from clubs to academics to sports. Write more if you feel it necessary, but do not be repetitive. If you do not have much to say, make it small, but if you want to show your research, big is fine too.
@vroomvroom1_23 Okay thank you! I also wrote mine in a similar way to yours, where I covered a couple of different topics like my activities and academics and what I hope to pursue at UCLA. Iâve had at least 5 people look it over, so Iâm thinking itâs about as good as itâs going to get.
As far as the reading of essays are concerned, I am as hopeful as you are, that they take out the time to read the entire piece. Assuming that they are used to reading decently sized essays, I guess they will read the entire piece.
Just wanted to get a little closure on what was previously mentioned about only being able to submit your waitlist essay once. Is this confirmed? I ask because my first âsubmissionâ didnât have any grades or essay written, and my second submission was my final draft. I really hope what @25Raider said is not the case.
@damedolla1234 - I would send an email to the admissions office. We have concerns too because my son âsubmittedâ his initial draft, and now we donât know if they will read that one, or the essay he emailed separately to the admissions office. Thinking we will also update the waitlist portal with the final essay and hope we got the wrong guidance.