With the Early Decision and Early Action deadlines only one week away, many of you seniors are probably putting the final touches on your first round of applications. Before submitting your application, it’s imperative to make sure your application is error-free and in the best shape possible. In this article, we will be discussing nine things to pay close attention to before sending off your application.
1. Name and Contact Information
While this may seem trivial, it is extremely important to double-check that your name and email are spelled correctly! It’s possible that you initially mistyped these details since they were the first things you entered when starting the application. If your name is misspelled, colleges may have a hard time linking you to material outside of your application--including transcripts, campus visits, alumni interviews, and more--which can affect how admissions officers view your application. As for your contact information, email is the primary way colleges will be communicating with you. This communication can include setting up interviews, requesting additional information, university-specific scholarship opportunities, and—most importantly—your admissions decision!
2. Parent Information
The “Family” section of the Common App (or the equivalent on other application platforms), especially details regarding your parents, help contextualize your situation. It provides information such as where your family is from, if you’re a first-generation college student, your living situation (whether your parents are married or divorced, guardianship, etc.), and more. How colleges evaluate a first-generation college student living with one parent will greatly differ from how they evaluate a student living with both parents who have Master’s degrees, so it’s crucial that you correctly report this field.
3. Transcript
Before your counselor submits their portion of your application, make sure to request an official copy of your transcript and ensure all the information (grades, attendance, GPA, etc.) are listed correctly. If there is an error, contact your high school counselor about getting it fixed.
In some cases, high schools will automatically list SAT and/or ACT scores on your transcript. As many colleges are going test-optional this year, many people are choosing not to submit test scores. If you are someone who is choosing to omit test scores from colleges, double-check your transcript to make sure it’s not showing the test scores! If they are, talk to your counselor about getting it removed.
4. GPA
Ensure that the GPA you are reporting on your application matches the GPA listed on the latest version of your transcript. Most colleges ask high school counselors to submit transcripts, and admissions officers will be cross-checking the GPA listed on your transcript with the one you’ve submitted. If the two don’t match up--whether it’s intentional or not--it could compromise the integrity of your application.
5. Tests Scores
Similar to your GPA, once admitted, colleges will ask you to submit an official score report for all test scores you have reported to ensure you were telling the truth. If you are someone who is choosing to submit different test scores for different colleges, make sure you are reporting the correct scores for each college and not including a score unintentionally.
6. Activities Section Formatting
There are many ways to format your activities section, but whatever you decide to do, make sure you stick to the same format throughout your entire activities section. This includes (but is not limited to) maintaining consistent capitalization for activity titles/positions, keeping all activity descriptions in the same tense (present or past), and breaking up statements with the same punctuation each time (usually a comma or semicolon). While these seem minor, they can go a long way in making your application look more clean and professional.
7. The Admissions Plan
Before submitting your application, double-check that the admissions plan you chose is the one that you actually want! It is surprisingly easy to accidentally choose Regular Decision for a school you wanted to apply Early Action/Decision for or vice versa. You do not want to have spent all this time on applications just for you to choose the wrong admissions plan, so be vigilant about checking this.
8. Essays
The college application process is overwhelming, so it is easy to make mistakes in your essays that you may not catch unless you proofread. One great way to proofread is by reading your essays out loud. This can help you catch misspellings, grammar mistakes, accidental repetition, or awkward wording that online spelling and grammar checkers might miss. Most importantly, if you are writing about a certain school, make sure that you are calling them by the correct name in the application! There have been way too many mistakes of students turning in essays that said “I love Harvard because…” when submitting to a school that was NOT Harvard.
9. Early Decision Agreement
If you are applying for Early Decision (ED) to a school, you must complete the Early Decision Agreement. Make sure that you and a parent/legal guardian read and sign the agreement. Your counselor must also read and sign the agreement and they are ultimately responsible for the submission of the ED agreement. Be sure to double-check that your counselor has submitted it after you and your parents have completed it.
You are almost at the end of the early round of college applications. Congratulations and thanks for sticking with us! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this article or anything else in general, do not hesitate to reach out to us: applicationoverloadblog@gmail.com.
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