Noticed mistake on common app after submitting!

Sikorsky
Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:56:50 +0000

Oh, I see the “OMG, I made a mistake in my Common App!” season is coming early this year!

Relax, mmarilyn. It’s a small error. You reversed two scores. So what? It’s not as if you got 2’s on everything, but “accidentally” reported that you’d gotten 5’s.

Most likely, the colleges will not get “real AP scores” from elsewhere, because most likely they will not actually base their admissions decisions on your AP scores. I do not recommend that you email the colleges you’ve applied to. Nobody will notice this difference. And *if *anybody does notice, and does ask you about it, I suggest that then and only then, you should respond as follows: “Oops! I must have switched those scores when I filled out the Common App. I’m sorry.”

Mistakes on the Common App really come in two kinds, I think. There are the trifling little errors such as the one you made. There’s no point in correcting those, I think, because the people in admissions offices don’t want to spend their time correcting errors that are of no importance. And there are the errors that really do make an applicant look like a dolt, such as the “global search and replace” errors (e.g., sending your essay off to Yale with the final sentence, “And that’s why I want to spend the next four years in Cambridge, Mass.!”) There’s no point in correcting those, I think, because once they’ve noticed it, it’s simply too damn late!