One Tip to Save Your College Applications After You Submit
After the submission of college applications, many students make a critical mistake: They frequently contact the admissions office. Such students do not realize that these frequent contacts can harm their chances of acceptance. Rather, students who are patient, and resist the urge to contact the admissions office, have a much greater chance of getting accepted.
Colleges appreciate a student’s patience and respect for their time—characteristics of professionalism and maturity sought after by many top colleges. In an article for the Huffington Post, “Stop! What NOT to Do After You Apply to College”, I explain to students and families what goes on in a college admissions office after you click submit and how to increase your chances of getting accepted while waiting for decisions.
Students spend months working on their college applications, and the wait and down-time after submission can be daunting. Therefore, after submitting their college applications, students contact admissions offices for various reasons, such as to provide additional information, further display one’s interest in the college, and check the status of their application. Students and families often believe that such actions will increase their chances of acceptance, as the colleges will become more familiar with their name and spend more time on their application. This is false!
Rather, after application deadlines, colleges are extremely busy reading hundreds of thousands of materials, and they want to carefully—and fairly—review each student’s application. Thus, they do not like to be distracted, especially if they sense a student is trying to get an advantage. Frequent unnecessary contacts from the same student may result in a biased, unfavorable opinion of that student—leading to a negative review of their application.
Read the full article here to learn what goes on in a college admissions office after you click submit and to learn more insights on how to increase your chances of acceptance!