Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Admit It!
Despite clicking submit as the January deadline approached, some of you are still freaking out about your application. I’m here to tell you to take a deep breath, relax, and have faith in the process. Also, know that we’re human and we understand that little glitches/mistakes/oopses happen. We have zero intention of penalizing you or your application for it. So what exactly is the small stuff you don’t have to sweat?
- If you don’t hear from us right away that we received your materials. We will email you and your parents twice: first when we receive your application and supplement from Common App and second when we match that with the rest of your materials (and don’t sweat it if several weeks go by between the two emails). We do not begin a file or entry in our database for you until we receive an actual application so materials sent prior by your school or teachers are here, they’re just not tracked until we receive your application. So if your school says they sent your materials in October, they did. They are here in our mail room and will be matched with your application when it arrives. As you can imagine, most of our 12,000+
Incomplete Files
applicants decide to submit their application in the days leading up to the deadline. As a result our office looks like this (and those stacks of empty mail crates will be replaced tomorrow with full ones). To process applications will simply take us some time. But don’t sweat the small stuff, we’ll keep in touch via email and let you know the status of your application as it progresses.
- If you accidentally didn’t check an optional box on the Common Application. If the question was necessary for us to make a decision, it would have been a required field and you would not have been able to submit the application without answering the question.
- If some part of your application physically landed in our office after January 1. We want to complete your application as much as you do and if materials arrive in a timely manner (but slightly after the January 1 deadline) we will gladly accept them and you will not be penalized or reviewed differently. Similarly if your teacher/school/you failed to postmark something by January 1, hakuna matata (it means no worries according to Pumba and Timone). If it’s sent slightly after the deadline we will be happy to add it to your file.
- If you found a small typo in one of your essays (a missed comma or something
mail crates
similar). We will not question your writing abilities based on one missed comma or using a colon where a semicolon should be. If you find a major typo or several, you can resubmit your essay via fax, email or mail.
- You haven’t heard from us about optional materials (fine arts supplement, optional submission, teacher recommendation, resume, etc.). We do not track receipt of optional materials. There are simply too many to count and entering all of them into our system just isn’t feasible. Trust the system; if you sent it, it’ll get here and be matched with your file.
- If you submitted the Common App before midnight your time but not before midnight Eastern Standard Time. We do not cut off the feed from Common App at midnight EST on January 2. Similarly, if according to Common App your application is in process or not yet submitted, fear not. There is a bit of a backlog and a slight processing delay. We are continuing to accept feeds from Common App every day.
- If you get an email from us saying a part of your application is missing. Again, we want to complete your app as much as you do. Simply re-submit the missing materials as soon as you can. We will add them to your file and begin its review without penalty.
- You read in a guidebook that the deadline was January 5 and then learned from our website that it’s January 1. We will continue to accept applications submitted during the next few days.
This list could probably go longer but I’ll stop for now. You get the point. We’re not deadline zealots who sit in our offices cackling and tapping our fingers together with evil smiles waiting to reject applicants on the basis of minor errors or materials sent/received after January 1. We’re anxious to review your applications and we can’t do that if we don’t help you complete them. That’s what we’re working on right now. So don’t sweat it man. That’s what April’s for.
Wendy Livingston ’03, M.Ed ’09
Senior Assistant Dean of Admission
Comments are closed on posts older than one year, but we still want to hear from you. If you have a comment or question for us, please email admission@wm.edu.
There is something I feel that I should sweat–a simple typing mistake has caused me a lot of stress. I feel that you may not think of me as a competent applicant to W&M, but I lost focus on simple things such as my DOB on the CommonApp, and instead focused on the Activities page and the essays, not thinking I would mistakenly write one number off for my date of birth. What can I do about this? I don’t wish to needlessly call the office at such a hectic time.
L,
Your birth date (or any other biographical information) is definitely something we want to have corrected. Just email admission@wm.edu with your correct birthday so we can update it in our system. If you’ve already received an email confirming receipt of your application, that email has a W&M ID number. Provide that in the email you send to us. If you haven’t yet received that email, include your full name and high school in the email.
But don’t worry, deans do not look at your address/birthday/etc when reviewing your application so we won’t even notice the typo and even if we did, we know typos happen and would never consider someone incompetent as a result.
Anxiously waiting for April to get here, so I can close this chapter and move to the next!!
Marilyn, we are too. We really enjoy the process of selecting and enrolling the newest W&M class
I know it was said that two weeks should be allowed to recieve the first e-mail that your application was recieved, but should I be concerned if I haven’t recieved it yet?
Concerned, we still are in the process of downloading close to 2,000 applications (thus 2,000 applicants have not yet receive the initial email confirming receipt of their application). If you wish to email admission@wm.edu with your full name, we can check the Common Application’s system to be sure your application is in the pipeline. Given we were closed today for MLK Day, it may take us a few days to get back to you.
If for any reason there was some glitch in the processing of your application, we would absolutely allow you to resubmit it.
Thanks for the reassurance! I’ll check if I feel the need to.
No worries Concerned. As of this morning, it looks like we still have about 1500 apps in process who haven’t received emails. If you don’t get your email by week’s end (and check your spam and junk folders and have your parents do the same because they get the email too), definitely check in with us
Dear Admit It:
A couple of days after submitting my application to W&M, I discovered a very tiny typo in the short response to the extracurricular question in the Common App. I wrote “brings alone” instead of “brings along”. Could that jeopardize in any way my chances of being admitted to W&M? I don’t want the admissions officers to think that I am not serious about being part of the Tribe, to which I have been looking forward since my sophomore year in high school.
Warmly,
S.O.S.
SOS, one small typo would never be the reason we do not admit a student. You are welcome to send an email to admission@wm.edu including your W&M Application ID noting the typo and your correction and we can add that email to your file if you wish.