Hello,
I misrepresented myself in some essays and writing questions whilst applying REA. It wasn’t small; I grossly underestimated how cocky I sounded in my personal statement and supplemental. When I read back what I wrote, I realized it was very very bad.
Since I applied REA, do I have a chance to change what I wrote to be considered in the Regular Decision round? Can I withdraw my REA application, change the writing, and resubmit for RD?
Thanks.
I plan to reach out to the admissions office via email to apologize for such rudeness.
There’s your answer. Don’t expect a positive response. Even if they allow, you’ve eliminated your RD chances by telling them you didn’t care enough to submit a quality application
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So you would recommend I don’t reach out at all?
I wouldn’t consider the quality of the application poor; it was just my wording was slightly off, giving them a wrong impression. It’s less of a quality but more of a character issue.
You can move to RD if you want. But asking to resubmit essays is not a good look for the reason I mentioned. Regardless of your intent, they may infer differently.
But to be clear, you cannot withdraw and resubmit an entirely new application; the Common App won’t let you. Whether the college will let you replace a part of your existing application will be up to them. But expect them to compare and contrast the versions
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Hmm, that makes a lot of sense.
Do you think I should instead just apologize for my wording? Let them know that I am sincerely sorry for the impression that I gave?
At this point, I can’t see why it “can’t hurt to try”
At this point, I can’t see why it “can’t hurt to try”
Double negative here on accident. I think it “can’t hurt to try”
My two cents is depending on exactly what you are talking about, it could in fact hurt to try.
The basic issue here is you cannot unring the bell–they will see these materials.
And if you write to them to “apologize”, it is likely just going to cause them to focus even more on what you actually wrote.
Of course if their reaction to what you wrote was inevitably going to be the same, you might not have caused any further harm–but you also might not have helped.
However, if your apology actually changes their reaction, it might well do so for worse, making them more likely to view it as negatively as you are suggesting with your apology, as lacking in sincerity, or so on.
Of course I truly don’t know. I just think sometimes the right thing to do is just cross your fingers and hope it isn’t a big deal to them, because sometimes attempts to “fix” what is really an unfixable problem just make it worse instead.
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That’s actually very eye-opening to me, thank you very much.
I wanted to sound confident in my material, but I believe I gave the impression of sounding cocky. I agree that this could’ve gone both ways, with them viewing it as a good thing or a bad thing.
The problem is that I still haven’t gotten an interview (I’m international) whilst others have, which suggests to me that they must’ve taken my cockiness badly to filter me out very quickly. Of course it could be other factors, but in my opinion my activities and grades are competitive.
Overall I get the impression that I must’ve made a big mistake somewhere, because it doesn’t make sense for my application to be rejected outright. That’s the problem I want to fix. What are your thoughts?
There is no application filter to assign interviews. Interviews are randomly assigned based on availability.
I don’t know the extent of the changes. If they’re minor, do nothing. If they’re major, you can try, but I firmly believe this will bite you in the end.
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but I firmly believe this will bite you in the end
Alright. I will take your advice and not send it. Thank you so very much for helping me out here. We nervous college applicants must be a nuisance for you folks to handle; I really appreciate your patience. 
Interviews are randomly assigned based on availability.
The school I’m applying to has assigned an interview to another student in my area, and the number of accepted applicants who did not have an interview is near zero. Let’s just hope it hasn’t been scheduled yet, although my hopes are not high.
So I don’t actually think the lack of an interview offer is a signal either way about their intentions.
But if in fact they do reject or defer you, you will never really know why. Because they really don’t need a strong reason to say no, they actually need a strong reason to say yes. And so the explanation may be nothing more than nothing stood out to them as a strong reason to say yes.
In that sense, I think a lot of people have this model in mind where it is like a test where you start at 100 and then they subtract points for bad things, and if there are too many subtractions you won’t get admitted. Instead, there is no such thing as a perfect score, and in fact there is no definitive scoring at all. They just choose a variety of different people who they particularly like for a variety of different reasons.
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I would do nothing. Anything else just puts a light on something you don’t really want a light on. You getting or not getting an interview really has nothing to do with your essay. Some readers /schools like when the applicant sounds confident. Let’s go with that.
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For what its worth, I wrote a really cocky essay when I applied to Yale. I did so because Yale was far down on my list because of a bad tour guide, but my parents made me apply. Come Ivy Day (back then it was snail mail), I got the thin envelopes from Harvard and Princeton, my first 2 choices, but the thick one from Yale. To my horror, at Freshmen dinner night at my residential college, the Dean read several personal essays so that we could get a sense of our classmates. Mine was one of those read. I did not admit to being the author of that essay until after graduation. So you never know.
Sometimes for these far reach schools, “going big or going home” might not be a bad strategy for your essay(s). One of my S’s good friend had me review his Harvard essay. It was out there. He was a typical average excellent student with sub 1500 SAT’s. He still got in REA.
So no, don’t try to retract your app. It will only draw attention in a negative way.
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