Rocketing Past the College Admissions Blunders

Student goal: Admission to Oberlin College.

Strategy: Show some essay love for Julie Taymor, the gifted alumna who dazzled Broadway with The Lion King.

Problem: Instead of Lion King, the applicant types in Loin King. 

If you're what's known as a "one-read admit"—great grades, test scores, and activities—you can afford a misstep or two. If you're a "one-read deny," proofreading won't save you. 

As for the rest of you, you're on the bubble—and you'll deflate your chances with typos, bad etiquette, and other application errors. How can you avoid self-sabotage? High school students, gird your lions—better make that loins—and read on. 

Sanitize your E-mail address. Spicychick@gmail.com, I'm talking to you. Devise a new handle. And don't follow the exam­ple of the student who came up with "UGafan" and used it to apply to the competition. If you're feeling creative, Kristin Tichenor, vice president for enrollment management at Worcester Polytech­nic Institute, proposes dyingtogotowpi. "We absolutely adore shameless adoration," she says. But really, you can't go wrong with your name. It helps colleges find your records. And you do need to keep up with incoming mail from colleges to which you've applied: Weekly check-in, at minimum, is wise. 

Keep nicknames private. Some schools ask what you'd like to be called. The idea is if your name is James and you go by Jim, you'll be more comfort­able if the school calls you Jim. The idea is not "You can call me Peanut," Leigh-Ann No­wicki, dean of admissions at Wag­ner College, says with a laugh. 

P.S. Facebook info can be largely private—unless you've "friend­ed" a friendly recruiter. But, Tichenor says, "We gen­erally frown upon that kind of interaction in the profession. We understand that Facebook is reserved for students on a recreational basis. We just don't want to know." 

Follow directions. If a school says it wants letters of rec­ommendation from 11th- and 12th-grade teachers only, here is what it means: We want letters only from 11th- and 12th-grade teachers. 

Recruit enthusiastic recommenders. If a teacher seems lukewarm about writing a letter, make a polite excuse, sug­gests Marjorie Jacobs, director of college counseling at SAR High School in Riverdale, N.Y. Then find one who will sing your praises with gusto.

Extracurrics: Don't overdo it. The more, the warier. "If you add all the hours they say they're doing, you wonder how the hell are they going to school," says Arnaldo Rodriguez, vice president for admission and financial aid at Pitzer Col­lege. "It becomes suspect at that point. Are they careless, or just trying to pad the application to make themselves look more committed than they really are?"

Shun jargon. You're president of the LLDC club and a Tiger Paws staff member? LLDC does not compute. As for Tiger Paws, are you an animal activist or a staffer for the literary magazine? 

Explain changes. You bailed out of the crew team. Is that because you're lazy? Just rowing to impress colleges? Or did you quit because the way the coach berated a team member was such a turnoff? Find a way to make that point in your essay or an accompanying letter.

Know thy college. In an interview or essay, say something specific about the school: Mention a noted professor who teaches a subject you're interested in, internship opportunities at a neighboring medical center, your thoughts about the honor code. 

Keep schools straight. It's a classic: A student tackles the essay "Why State U?" by concluding, "And so, I would be proud to be a member of the class of 2014 at Podunk College." 

"It's one of the [mistakes] we see most often," says Laura Simmons, associate director of admissions at Furman University. It won't automatically put you out of the running, but it makes you seem careless. "It's like a check minus," says Simmons. "Where I can see it really doom a student is in scholarship competition. Stakes are higher, and there are more students of their quality or better." 

Think twice before tugging at heartstrings. You're not going to be admitted because a friend committed suicide, a parent lost a job, or a sibling died of cancer. Unless you can use a sorrowful story to reveal something more about your­self, it is a tale best not told.

Keep it clean. A profane word is "not an accident, and we don't view it as an accident," says Debra Chermonte, dean of admissions and financial aid at Oberlin. "We view that as a deliberate attempt to be noticed." And not in a good way. 

Schools H8 2 C texttalk. You don't want the admissions officer thinking, "This kid spends way too much time on his cell."

Explain easy courses. You took honors English through 11th grade, then slid down to a standard class. Colleges want rigor, not relaxation, so state the reason. "Burned out" is not so good. "Decided to focus on my real love—­science" is much better. 

Own up to any bad behavior. Don't lie about school pun­ishments. The school is dutybound to report them. And don't pretend your suspension for boozing it up at a foot­ball game was a one-time thing if you had two warnings beforehand. Your school will report that, too. What does matter is your take on the experience. "Accept responsi­bility; show contrition or lessons learned," suggests Sim­mons of Furman.

Optional essays aren't optional. Some students think that, since they live in a democracy and are very busy, they can opt to ignore the optional essay. Don't opt out, says Ja­cobs of SAR High School. This could be the place to ex­plain bad grades or other glitches in your résumé. 

Be electronically savvy. Colleges get calls from students in April. They say they submitted the application in De­cember and never heard. Guess what: "They didn't click the final 'submit' button," says Wagner's Nowicki. And guess what else: April is typically too late to click.

Don't overcompensate by pressing "submit" seven times. Just send an E-mail after a week: "I want to make sure you received my application and all supporting documents." 

Don't send the E-mail to admissions@favoritecollege.edu. Do send it to the admissions staffer you met at one of your high school's college nights or during a visit to the campus. Or ask for the name of the person handling your region.

Handwriting counts. A few students apply the old-fash­ioned way—with penmanship so sloppy that the college admissions office can't read the E-mail address to ask for clarifications. 

"Sometimes you get a handwritten application and it's clearly not the student who filled it out," adds Rodriguez of Pitzer College. "You wonder who's interested, parent or stu­dent?" One obvious tipoff is when the handwriting doesn't match the signature on the application. 

Don't assume your counselor will handle it. Students think high school counselors will handle any request from a college for missing information. They can't if they don't know about it in the first place. As Missy Sanchez, director of college counseling at Woodward Academy near Atlanta, puts it, "Sometimes counselors are included in the cor­respondence, sometimes not." 

Don't be cocky. Jacobs recalls a senior who fig­ured he was a lock at two Ivy League schools. At School No. 1, his parents had a friend of a friend on the board. At School No. 2, an admissions counselor told him he'd be a good bet. Or at least that's how he remembered the conversation.

Both schools said no. Part of the reason was that his test scores were more impressive than his grades. He could have addressed that in the "optional" essay, but he didn't feel he needed to write one (see above). 

He did get into a state university but hadn't bothered to apply for the honors program. At the 11th hour, he was giv­ing FedEx a lot of business.

Eschew artiness. College deans will surely groan/If your essay is a poem. 

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