I once received an email from a student explaining that he couldn’t send me his essays by our 5 p.m. deadline because his email wasn’t working. Yes, he offered the broken email excuse…over email.
Most seniors applying to college would never think of submitting an application after a deadline and hope to excuse it away. But a lot of students do submit their letter of recommendation paperwork to their teachers at the last minute. Even with a profuse apology and an excuse about how busy you are, that sends a terrible message that you didn’t care enough about your teacher’s time or your college application to just get it done sooner. The same can be said of those students who visit their counselor one day before winter break to hand in requests to have transcripts sent.
An excuse for missing a deadline almost always focuses on what got in the way at the last minute. They rarely excuse how you wasted your time in the weeks or months leading up to it. So don’t make that the story people tell about you. Make their story one about how you got your act together enough to get it done sooner than expected.