On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 02:19:03PM -0600, Eli Naeher wrote:
With Common Application, Many Find a Technical Difficulty in Common, Too
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/education/23college.html
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When he would follow the program’s instructions to execute a “print
preview” of his answers — which would show him the actual version that
an admissions officer would see, as opposed to the raw
work-in-progress on his screen — his responses were invariably cut off
at the margin, in midsentence or even midword.
I'm pretty sure I was rejected from a summer-study program two years ago
because their custom online application, like the Common App, truncated
input---but, unlike the Common App, there was no print-preview I could
check. I found out only after my application was "confirmed" by e-mail.
And yet, enough students, parents and counselors complained about the
problem this fall that the organization has scrambled in recent weeks
to embed a link to a warning box within the form.
It reads, in part, “It is critical that you preview your Common App
and check for truncated information. If you preview the Common App and
find some of your text is missing, you should attempt to shorten your
response to fit within the available space.”
When I applied to college last year, a few fields had their final
details, mostly minor, truncated by the Common App. It certainly wasn't
a problem for me (although I'd probably be more careful if I had to do
it again).
“A capital W takes up 10 times the space of a period,” he said.
“If a student writes 163 characters that include lots of Ws and
m’s and g’s and capital letters, their 163 characters are going to
take many more inches of space than someone who uses lots of I’s and
commas and periods and spaces.”
Asked why the problem had not been fixed, Mr. Killion said, “Believe
me, if there’s a way to do it, we’d do it. Maybe there’s a way
out there we don’t know about.”
How about not requiring an *electronic* application to meet the
constraints of a *printed* page?
Hate.
