The cliché is true—everybody makes mistakes. But there are honest mistakes, and then there are careless mistakes. Careless mistakes almost always happen because you cared less.
Whenever we post a help-wanted ad for a position at Collegewise, about 1/3 of the applicants we hear from refer to us as “College Wise.” An error like that doesn’t necessarily mean a person wouldn’t make a great counselor. But these applicants also frequently send cover letters and resumes that have an “insert name of company here” feeling. The strongest applicants, on the other hand, make it obvious that they have spent plenty of time getting to know us on our website. They appreciate our mission and consider how they could contribute to it. And they communicate that connection with a compelling cover letter they obviously wrote just for us (all of which we explicitly encourage people to do in our help-wanted ads). They never make the “College Wise” mistake, either. But the difference between the two kinds of applicants isn’t the spelling. It’s the caring.
Many students going through the college admissions process are anxious about making a mistake that will ruin their hard work and tank their chances of admission. But I’ve never met a college admissions officer who would reject a student just because you used the wrong version of “roll” instead of “role” in your essay. That’s an honest mistake. And honest mistakes are forgivable, even in college admissions.
But submitting a college essay that ignores the prompt and mentions the wrong school? Waiting eight days to reply to your interviewer’s email? Procrastinating until the day before an application is due to ask your counselor to write a letter of rec? Those are careless mistakes. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to care.