There’s nothing worse than writing a college application only to learn that you didn’t secure an admission to a learning institution of your choice.
It means you have to re-write the application, resend it to the admissions board for review, and wait a few more days for a response.
If you’re lucky, you will get a response before college application deadlines pass. However, if you get a late review or fail to get one at all, you might have to wait until the next intake or try applying to another school.
Looking at this from a student’s point of view, it can be disheartening to get a rejection for your application. However, there id a high chance you made one or more college application mistakes that clearly explain why you failed to secure an admission in the first place.
In this guide, we look at the most common, and perhaps even obvious, college application mistakes that aspiring students make and then learn how to fix them.
5 College Application Mistakes and How to Fix Them
1. Your College Application Doesn’t Stand Out
Admission committees in top college in the country hardly have the time to read general application essays. Their work is to look at what makes you stand out from the rest of the applicants, so you’re going to have to give them more than just your high school experience.
Stop blending in and try to stand out instead. In other words, make your college application document as detailed as possible by highlighting and explaining the attributes that makes you a different person.
Including your strengths, challenges, achievements, and activities such as internships and community projects can add a depth to your personal description and therefore make your application stand out.
2. The Application Focuses Only on Academics
We get it.
You want so much to get an admission in a top college to further your education in a field of your choice. However, that doesn’t mean your entire application should focus entirely on academic.
Colleges look for students who have varied talents and experiences. So your application should demonstrate your willing and zeal to participate in extracurricular activities such as sports, community projects, and student organizations.
The assumption that extracurricular activities are ONLY handy for college resumes or when applying for a scholarship is simply not true. These also have to appear in your college application to demonstrate your commitment and involvement in different area besides academics.
3. Errors in Your Personal Statement
Some schools ask that you submit a personal statement alongside a college application essay. Should be the case with the institution you wish to join, you have to do the best you can to write a comprehensive personal statement.
A personal statement has nothing to do with what others have done for you or what the school you will to enroll in can do for you. Rather, it’s a document that’s 100% about you.
Your personal statement should tell the admissions committee more about you as a person and, at the same time, express just how badly you want to study at the university in question.
Some applicants fail because they either don’t know how to write a personal statement or pay attention to the instructions provided. You don’t want to make this kind of mistake because it will automatically have your application rejected.
A personal statement should:
- Talk a little bit more about the extracurricular activities that you’re passionate about
- Give a clear and in-depth explanation about why you chose the university in question above other and why you think it makes the best learning institution to study
- Show a clear interest in the subjects that you would like to study
You can read our more in-depth guide on personal statement as well as a list of personal statement mistakes to avoid for more insights.
4. Sending Your College Application Late
Last minute college applications are the worst of a kind for several reasons:
- You can miss the college application submission deadline altogether
- It can give the admissions committee a first bad impression about you and therefore reflect poorly only as a potential candidate
- The college or university to which you’re applying may that you’re a lazy student
- It sends an impression to the admissions board that their learning institution is the least of your considerations.
Colleges and universities set application deadlines because they need to have enough time afterwards to review the applications that they’ve received during the period of ongoing intake.
Potential applicants may either get an admissions response or fail to qualify for a position in the school altogether.
The best to do is to make sure you apply as early as possible. At the very least, writing your college application early allows you to fix errors in your document and ensure that you have all the necessary papers required for the admission process.
5. You Submitted a Generic Application
Some applicants simply don’t write college applications that stand out, and that’s a mistake that can deny you an intake into a learning institution of your choice.
Why? It’s because the admissions board don’t to see general attributes of their schools that could be true somewhere else.
If anything, taking the cookie-cutter route to work on your college application may make the admission committee assume that you don’t want to work hard enough to get an admission into a good college, and they will therefore ignore your application.
First, do enough research about the school you wish to join, so you can identify the unique characteristics about the institution that are completely independent of any other school out there.
Second, mention these attributes in your college application, making you discuss them in the order of priority.
Final Words
The worst thing that could happen if you make these college application mistakes is fail to start learning on time.
So you should try the best you can to write an application that stands out, one that gives an admissions committee enough reasons to consider you as one of the potential candidates for their learning institution.