You have just a few days to go before applications are due, so it's time to go over some of the common questions that come up as the deadline looms.
1. The Regular Decision deadline for UVa is midnight on January 1st.
That doesn't mean those of you who thought it was midnight on the 31st now have permission to procrastinate. Avoid submitting at the last minute since there are thousands of students applying to schools with January 1st deadlines who will also be submitting tomorrow. Give yourself a nice buffer just in case something goes wrong and you need some help from the Common App folks.2. Double check the type of application you are submitting.
Double check that you indicated that you are a first-year applicant submitting an Regular Decision application for the Fall 2015 term. Every now and then, someone decides they are a transfer student because they have AP/IB/DE/college credit. If you are graduating from high school this year, you are applying as a first year student.3. Contact Common App if you have trouble submitting.
There is a help button on every single screen within the Common App's website. The admission officers at your schools aren't able to help with Common App issues. What's more, if there's a problem, the Common App team needs to know about it in case it is systemic.4. Your UVa status page won't be current yet.
We have two processes happening simultaneously right now: the Early Action review and Regular Decision application processing. Our staff is scanning documents as quickly as possible, but it will take a couple weeks for everything that arrives around deadline to be checked in. If we are missing something from you after all the documents have been processed, we will be in touch! Just focus on getting your application submitted. Don't panic about your status page just yet. Please don't call or email admission officers to check on documents. We will be immersed in file review and can't sift through mail bins or stacks of documents that are being scanned.5. Your application won't be "downloaded" on deadline day.
Every year, we get frantic emails from students who submit before the deadline, but don't see their application as downloaded by their schools. Applications tend to be downloaded once per day and the download date is almost never the same as the date you submitted. No need to worry about that!Here are a few blog posts that address some other things that might be on your mind. I'll be updating the posts from last year with some new thoughts in the coming weeks.
-All of the 2014-2015 first-year essay questions together
-Holistic admission explained
-Essay word length
-Essay formatting
-How we use demonstrated interest
-Sending Resumes to UVa
-About extracurricular activities
-Common concerns about status pages
You do not need to rush your SAT scores to us at this time. As long as you get your request in to ETS before the deadline, we should be good.
Good luck, seniors! Feel free to ask questions in the comments!
