Some mistakes on college applications are worse than others. Here are my top ten application miscues that can hurt your chances, but frankly, are easy to avoid.
1. Does any part of your application resemble a text message? Capitalization, punctuation and complete sentences are your friends.
2. Do your essays use any words you used a thesaurus to find? Thesaurus words sound like they came, well, from a thesaurus.
3. Did your parents write any part of the application or essays for you? It will be obvious if they did.
4. Did you self-report any of your classes or grades incorrectly? If a college asks you to report this information, don’t even attempt it without your official transcript in hand.
5. Did you make excuses for things that were your fault? If you told them the “C” you got in Spanish was because of a “personality conflict with your teacher,” you’re making this mistake.
6. Does your essay about why you want to attend the school reference the wrong school (a surprisingly common mistake for students recycling essays from other applications)?
7. Speaking of recycling, are you reusing an essay from another school that doesn’t actually answer this particular prompt? Revise or start over. But don’t just recycle at all costs.
8. Did you rely on spell check without a human to back it up? A student once asked us to review an application in which he’d written that he struggled with “standardized testes.” I swear I am not making that up. Spell check doesn’t catch everything. Find a good human editor to back it up.
9. Are you including extra materials the college didn’t ask you to send, like extra letters of recommendation, a resume, a DVD, an art project, a live reptile that you think best represents you, etc.? Unless they ask (which some colleges do), assume they don’t want it.
10. Did you use even the light-hearted questions, like, “What’s something you do just for fun?” as an opportunity to brag about an accomplishment, like, “I sincerely enjoy performing over 100 hours of community service at the hospital”?
P.S. If you’re applying to schools on the Common Application and want more advice about how to avoid mistakes and really make your application stand out, check out our Collegewise Guide to the Common Application. It’s $12.99 and available as a downloadable PDF.
That Guy says
Hi, the guide is actually 12.99 on the shopping cart page. I’m still buying it but just thought you’d like to know 😀
Kevin McMullin says
Thanks, That Guy. It’s been fixed in the post now. And trust me, the irony of my listing the price of my own product incorrectly in an entry on the importance of avoiding stupid mistakes in college applications is not lost on me. It was a pretty stupid thing to do.