Many of us in Peabody Hall are wonderful where the month of December went. We are immersed in the early action review, but the regular decision applications are rolling in. The regular decision deadline is just around the corner!
I have three important reminders for those who are working on regular decision applications right now. I'll try to keep this short and concise.
1. Double check your choices on the Future Plans page
You probably filled out the future plans page months or weeks ago. Now that you're deep into the application, you might not even remember what that page was for. Here's the thing: if you started your application really early and toyed with the idea of submitting for early action, you might need to change the radio button on the Future Plans page.
2. You have to submit THREE times.
Every year, there are a few students or parents who call way after the deadline to tell us that they thought submitting a payment would "force" the other sections of the Common App to come to us. The Common App folks set things up so that you can submit a component of the application when you are done with it and still work on other components. This is obviously helpful if mom or dad are helping you submit payment, but you want to put finishing touches on your applications.
This should be apparent when you are on the main "My Colleges" page on the Common App website, but I'll repeat it here: there are three items to submit: the Common Application, the UVa Supplement, and the payment. Submitting one item does not force the others to come to us.
3. Use the "Help" button on the Common App website.
Individual schools can't fix problems that you have with the Common App website. The Common App has a team of folks ready to help you if you run into trouble. I remember seeing some response time statistics last year and they were able to get back to almost every request within an hour, so they are pretty quick to help. You obviously don't want to be asking questions in the hours around the deadline, since the calls for support will probably be high.
While admission officers around the country are working right now, many are doing so from home or from dark offices.Calling a school about a Common App problem is not going to get you very far. Use the help button!
Good luck!
Feel free to ask questions in the comment section.