When it Comes to Applications, Should you Sweat the Small Stuff?

Application deadlines loom over the heads of high school seniors for months.  As deadlines approach and as deadlines pass, panic seems to ensue.  The question of whether all “i”s were dotted and all “t”s were crossed is forefront on applicants’ minds.  I’m here to tell you that the title of that little book you’ve seen in bookstores rings true: don’t sweat the small stuff.

If you submitted your application at 12:01 am when the application was due at midnight, don’t sweat it.  If your school was closed due to freak snow storms and your counselor couldn’t mail your transcript before the winter break, don’t sweat it.  If a teacher recommendation was not sent until the school reopened in January, don’t sweat it.  If you forgot to put one comma in your essay, don’t sweat it.  If you thought the deadline was January 5 but it was actually January 1, don’t sweat it.  If a teacher sent a recommendation without the cover sheet, don’t sweat it.   Remember, there are people behind the desks and at the other end of the phone lines at admission offices.  We’re human too and we know that mistakes happen or things come up.  We will gladly accept that overnight package delivered on January 2 and we are not going over your essays with a red pen looking for every missed punctuation mark.  We certainly want your application to be polished, proofread, and professional but we are not monsters who await every late submission and laugh as we tell the postman to return to sender.

We will work with any applicant, within reason, to get an application submitted on time (or close to it) and to get any application completed.  So it’s true what you’ve read, don’t sweat the small stuff!

– Wendy Livingston