Paved With Verbs
​
​College Admissions Counseling
***
Life Coaching
  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • Oxford-Style Tutorials
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Life Coaching
  • Payments

Blog
Advice to Get You Started on Your Applications -- And, hopefully, Improve Your Whole Life :)

You NEED To Visually Inspect Your College Essays Before You Hit Submit (As of 2020, There Are Still Bugs in the Common App)

9/14/2020

2 Comments

 
Picture
Crazy story: a few years ago, there was this weird bug in the Common App website that caused the last paragraph of essays to get deleted. 

​That means that countless applicants spent hours brainstorming, writing, and revising their essays... Only to submit an incomplete essay with no conclusion.
Need help with your conclusion? Contact me!

This didn't happen to any of my students, though — I warned them repeatedly to check the word count and make sure that the number in the Common App form matched the number in your Google doc. (If your essay was 648 words and not it's only 622, something has gone wrong.)

I told them to visually inspect the essay to make sure:

1) The whole thing is there.
2) There are no weird formatting issues.
3) Any special characters copied over correctly.
4) Your italics are still italicized.
5) Your entire essay isn't in bold font for some reason.
6) Everything is as expected. 

Because all of these issues have come up at least a dozen times over the years. 

A recurring one I've noticed most recently (as of Sept. 13, 2020) is that, for some reason, some essays are bolded in the Common App. 

So when you paste your essay from Google Docs or Word or whatever you're using to draft and edit...

Make sure your entire essay isn't in bold font.

I mean, sure. Your essay will be intact and the admissions officers will still be able to read it. But accidentally doing that shows that you're not paying close attention to detail... and indicates that maybe this essay doesn't matter very much to you. 

Heck, for all I know, this little "bug" is actually a feature to see who's actually paying attention. 

So pay attention. 

Don't put all those hours into writing the perfect Personal Statement, Short Takes, Short Answers, and Supplemental Essays...

Only to have something weird happen when you paste them into the website. 

​Or, as Professor Moody would say, CONSTANT VIGILANCE. 

    Need more help? Contact Paved With Verbs!

Submit
2 Comments
https://tutuappx.com/ link
10/22/2022 05:52:27 am

It’s also important for you to show appreciation for yourself and your life—this is something you can control!

Reply
Ronald Pittman link
11/10/2022 06:41:29 am

Military more give whom already capital store throw. Picture need various remain compare option agent. Product test you once white base.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Eva Glasrud completed her B.A. and M.A. at Stanford. She is now a college counselor and life coach for gifted youth.

    Archives

    May 2022
    July 2021
    September 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    August 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    May 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015

    Categories

    All
    College Admissions
    Creativity
    Essay Help
    Life Coaching
    Meaning
    Purdue
    Purpose
    Stanford
    UC
    UNC
    University Of California
    University Of Southern California
    USC

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
Photos used under Creative Commons from fjing229, mytradingskills, alusch, Scudamore's Punting Company, verchmarco, Photographing Travis, shixart1985, ropaisus, ogungo, Michael Dunn~!
  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • Oxford-Style Tutorials
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Life Coaching
  • Payments