Preparing Your Application - 5

The Details

Read through and use these few tips that will ensure that the hard work you put into your application and your essay is fully appreciated. If you neglect the details, you might detract from an otherwise great application.

• Be legible and neat. In the computer age documents of all kinds are looking much better than the typewritten ones of old. Standards of neatness and accuracy have risen along with the our capacity to very easily change what we write on the computer.

  If you do hand write your application, put yourself in the admissions officer's position. Avoid doing anything that would make her job harder or longer. Write clearly and neatly. Use a felt pen with a medium tip. Try to at least have your essay done on a word processor.

• Be consistent when you give your name and your address. Make sure that your name is the same as the name you gave on your SAT or ACT test. That is, if you used a middle initial on the tests, then use it on your college application too. Likewise, give your parents' names as they appear on their formal correspondence. Nick names are off limits unless requested by the college. Follow the consistency rule when it comes to your address, being careful to give apartment numbers if applicable.

• Be precise. Precision includes not only making sure to spell your counselor's name correctly and to report your class rank accurately; it also extends to describing your extracurricular activities.

  Before filling out your college applications, make a chart of all your activities in high school - including your job outside school if you have one. The chart should have five columns: In the first list the activities, the hours per week you spent on each, the number of years you participated in each, the leadership positions attained, and the skills you learned while participating. Make sure that this information finds its way onto your application. If the college will allow you to submit a supplementary statement on your activities, then submit the chart just described.

  A piece of advice: in describing your activities thoroughly and precisely, remember that leading in one activity is more important than following in several. Colleges and universities are interested in the depth of your commitments more than their breadth.

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