Peabody is the building, Jack is the dog, and I'm Dean J (she/her, btw).

There are years of posts here. The search box works well, but please consider the age of the posts when you find them. The college admission process changes every year!

References to emailing updates to your application are from the years when we didn't have the current applicant portal. Please follow the instructions in your portal to submit all updates.

Welcome to the blog and thanks for reading!

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

It's February! Can we freak out yet?

All through January, I told you not to freak out about you status pages until I told you to.  I dangled February as the time when you could start worry about what's left on your to do list.

You still shouldn't freak out.

Here are some reminders straight from the staff members who are overseeing the processing of your applications.

1.  Some of you only have mid-year grades on your to-do lists.  That's great!  We hope that we'll have this by the middle of the month.  Most of your school counselors already have this covered.

2.  If you listed a school on the Common App and you aren't going to send us a transcript from that school, you may now email us to remove that item from your check list.  Please email uvaapplicationinfo@virginia.edu about this.  You must use the subject line "Checklist adjustment request."  I have asked Common App to tighten up the language on that section so it's clear that the schools listed should be ones that have transcripts for you.

3.  Do not send duplicates of items that were already sent at this point.  We will contact you individually by email (check the email account you used on the Common App!) if/when we want you to send us something.  I promise you that we want your applications to be complete.  You aren't in trouble if we email you asking for an item.  Sometimes, things get misdirected and it's not your fault.



February is the toughest month of the application process for all of us.  There's a lot of reading on our side and a lot of waiting on yours.  I usually don't write as many blog posts during this month because most of my days are spent with your files.  Please know that I am keeping an eye on things.  Even if I don't post a new entry, I'm usually answering questions via the comment sections on the posts.

I usually check in via Twitter a few times per day (if you don't use Twitter, you can see the column to the right, where my most recent tweets are shown), take a peek at the bills I'm tracking on Richmond Sunlight (basically anything education related) each afternoon, and spend a few minutes on the UVa forum on College Confidential at least once per day.

On the bright side, things get much more interesting in March.  You can read last year's posts to get a sense of what that's like.

 
The CavDog equivalent to February