Operation “Soaring Eagle” : The Pre-Application Glossary – Part 1

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Okay, by now, you should have drawn up a final list of universities you plan to apply to. This is good, because you’ve overcome one major psychological hurdle – the confusion about which universities to apply to and how many to apply to. Now, you are in a position to begin putting together your application.

The next step is to find out what all you’ll be needing to complete your application. Once again, I call upon you – the prospective student – to go to the admissions websites of each university you’ve applied to, and locate the undergraduate freshman admissions page. This page will contain a number of links to other informative pages, which will tell you about admission courses available, deadlines, required documents, standardized testing requirements, financial aid, housing and much more. Out of these, at the moment, you only need to bother about the ones I’ve highlighted. This is because you should’ve already found out about the courses and financial aid, and because housing isn’t dealt with till much later in the admissions procedure.

This post primarily contains a glossary of terms you are likely to come across as you’re going through these webpages.

The Common Application

The Common Application, or Common App, as it is often abbreviated, is simply what it claims to be – an application which is common to more than one university. This is possibly one of the biggest boons to applicants to US universities from all over the world. However, before you get all excited, I should inform you that not all universities follow the Common App system. For example, some notable exceptions include Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, University of California, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Purdue University. Once again, this list of exceptions is not comprehensive, and only includes the ones that I applied to and the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. A full list of affiliate universities is available here. Also, the admissions website of your university will clearly state whether or not it accepts applications via Common App. In fact, there are some universities, such as Drexel University which accept applications via multiple means, one of which is the Common App.

Essentially, a Common App for a particular university usually consists of two parts – the main Common App, which is truly common to all universities you plan to apply to, and the supplement, which is unique for each university on your list. The supplement will contain fields for additional information which the admissions office may wish to collect from you and, more often than not, additional essays and writing sections for you to submit along with the main part of your Common App.

NOTE: The Common App website is not accessible via Google Chrome or Opera at the moment. I’m sure they’re working on it, but for now, you’ll have to stick to Firefox, Safari, Netscape or Internet Explorer.

Deadlines

This seems to be quite straightforward, but isn’t so. Several universities have different definitions about what a deadline is. But I’ve noticed that a majority of universities refer to a post-mark deadline i.e. all your submitted application materials need to have some proof that you mailed them by the deadline. This could be in the form of a postage stamp with the post office’s seal on it, or a DHL/FedEx/UPS waybill with the date on it, or some other proof affixed to the envelope which will be accepted by the admissions office. Nevertheless, do make sure that you send out your applications at least a week before the deadline.

This is especially true for those universities which must receive your documents before or on the deadline. In this case, if you are sending your documents via traditional mail, you must give at least two weeks for your documents to reach the university. If, however, you opt for a time-bound courier service, you can choose to cut it fine. Even so, leave at least a couple of days as a buffer, in case things go horribly wrong.

Of course, this talk is all meaningless in case you’re applying online, as the application will almost instantaneously be received by the admission office’s servers. However, be sure to submit a few days in advance to avoid trying to submit at a time when the servers are jammed full, or worse – crashed. There is no guarantee that the admissions office is going to be sympathetic to your pleas.

School Transcripts

This is one of the most common documents that an admissions office will ask for. Even if they don’t ask for it while applying, they will definitely expect a copy at the time of accepting an offer. Essentially this is a sheet of paper which will contain the grades/marks that you secured in high school i.e. grades 9, 10, 11 and possibly 12. Since you’ll be applying in the 12th grade, admissions officers do no expect you to be able to include your grade 12 results in the transcript. However, if you have more than 2 terminal exams in an academic year, and have received the results for one by the time you’re applying, you can choose to include those results in your transcript. This is optional, but recommended, especially if you’ve scored well in this set of examinations.

NOTE FOR CBSE STUDENTS

It is very likely that your school will be conducting at least 3 terminal examinations before you appear for your CBSE board examinations i.e. mid-terms, half-yearlies and pre-boards, or mid-terms, pre-boards I and pre-boards II. In this case, you can choose to send the mid-term/1st terminal exam results along with your transcripts.

The next post – Part 2 – will contain explanations for more terms that you’re likely to come across on the admissions websites of universities.

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