Category: Admissions Process

Happy Early Action deadline day!

That may be one of the few times the words “happy” and “deadline” have shared a sentence, much less one punctuated with an exclamation point. (Then again, “I’m happy I made that deadline!” comes to mind.)

Today, November 15, is our Early Action deadline day. As we head together into this day and the weekend that follows, here are a handful of things to keep in mind:

  1. Lawrence University is a Common Application school.
  2. The Common Application is not yet perfect, which means that some students, their counselors, or their recommenders may encounter technical issues—I believe the technical term is “gremlins”—when they try to submit their applications or supporting documents.
  3. If you find yourself beset by a Common App gremlin, don’t worry: even though our application deadline is today, we build in some grace time after that deadline for students and their supporters to get everything in.
    • Think about it: if you’re interested in Lawrence, we want you to be able to apply, and we don’t want the mechanism of the application to prevent you from being considered.
    • Grace time=till Tuesday, November 19. That should allow you (and us) most of Monday and Tuesday to work through any technical issues you have. If we need even more time working on this together, know that we will be flexible.

If you are a student applicant experiencing Common App problems, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor, with the understanding that issues you experience over the weekend will be best addressed when our offices and high school offices are open on Monday, November 18.

If you are a counselor or a teacher trying to (but not succeeding when you) submit materials on behalf of your applicants, we have built a counselor portal and a teacher recommendation letter portal.

In the meantime, be well and do well.

Common App concerns, 11/7 update

We continue to monitor the Common Application daily… and by “daily” we mean pretty much “hourly”.

We are under the impression that snags with the Common Application are diminishing. Last Thursday, October 31, was the next big test for the Common Application, as it was the day before the November 1 deadline for many colleges around the country. (That it would fall on Halloween seemed portentous.) That day, and the days that followed it, did not see a repeat of October 14, where many users were not able to log into their accounts.

This does not mean, however, that everything is now perfect with the Common Application, which is why we continue to post solutions for those of you who may run  into issues trying to submit your Common Application. Here are a couple directly from the Common Application we have had up for a little while now, followed by a suggestion to use the Common Application Knowledge Base:

Error Page upon Submission. On occasion, an applicant may see an error page upon submission. If this happens, the applicant should:

  1. log out of his or her account
  2. log back in
  3. go the Dashboard. The Dashboard should display confirmation that the application was submitted despite the error message observed during the submission process. The problem is with the page redirect, not the actual submission. We are working to fix this issue.

Unable to Create Account. There are some cases where recommenders are not able to create an account after clicking the “here” link within the recommender email invitation. If you encounter this issue, please contact the Help Center at recsupport.commonapp.org so that the support team can resolve this for you.

Knowledge base. If you encounter other head-scratchers while working on your Common Application, try checking the Common App Knowledge Base for tips. It is a searchable, rapid-response form that may offer you some solutions to problems.

Remember, if you’re having problems with the application itself, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor so we can (a) be aware of the problem and (b) make any necessary accommodations.

Our Early Action deadline is November 15.

(Our “hourly” monitoring of the Common App will occur with greater frequency as that date gets nearer.)

In the meantime, as Garrison Keillor says when he signs off on the Writer’s Almanac, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

Common App concerns, 10/29 update

We are under the impression that things are getting better with the Common Application with every passing day. According to Scott Anderson, Common App’s senior communication guy, the Common App had processed 350,000 applications, an increase of 28% over last year at this time. More important, he says that “while submission volume is growing daily, we have seen no recurrence of what  happened on October 14, the day many users were unable to log in to their accounts.”

If, however, you are one of the folks running into issues trying to submit your Common Application, here—directly from the Common App—are a couple of common problems and fixes:

Error Page upon Submission. On occasion, an applicant may see an error page upon submission. If this happens, the applicant should:

  1. log out of his or her account
  2. log back in
  3. go the Dashboard. The Dashboard should display confirmation that the application was submitted despite the error message observed during the submission process. The problem is with the page redirect, not the actual submission. We are working to fix this issue.

Unable to Create Account. There are some cases where recommenders are not able to create an account after clicking the “here” link within the recommender email invitation. If you encounter this issue, please contact the Help Center at recsupport.commonapp.org so that the support team can resolve this for you.

Remember, if you’re having problems with the application itself, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor so we can (a) be aware of the problem and (b) make any necessary accommodations.

Common Application concerns?

Lawrence University is a Common Application user.
At least for now, the Common Application is the only way to apply to Lawrence University.

The roll-out of the new Common Application has been bumpy and buggy. Despite that fact, and all the frustrations people have been experiencing with the Common Application, I offer this piece of advice from my friendly neighborhood yoga instructor:

Take a deep breath. Hold it. Lower your shoulders. Exhale.

Your application to Lawrence will be OK. Here’s why.

Time is still on your (and our) side. We are, at the time of this post, just a little more than two weeks from our Early Decision deadline (November 1), and a little less than one month from our Early Action deadline (November 15).

If you (or we) find that problems start arising leading up to those deadlines, please know that we will be flexible. If you know anything about Lawrence, you know that we take a student-centered approach to our work with you.

If you have applied, we have your application. If you have submitted yours and wonder if we have it, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor.

If you are having issues with your application, please get in touch with your Lawrence admissions counselor.

We are considering alternatives to the Common Application, in the event that problems persist.

Watch this space for updates as they happen.

Ken Anselment
Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid

 

The not so fine line between irony and sarcasm

Lawrence gets a lot of compliments from students, parents, and counselors on the tone we use in our communications with them: it’s friendly, thoughtful, and sprinkled with humor and wit.

Just like Lawrence.

You probably know one of the first rules of email: you don’t get to use facial expressions or vocal inflection to add context to your words, so your words and intentions had better be pretty clear.

So when an email rolled out of here yesterday with the subject line “Don’t apply to Lawrence,” well… it didn’t really sound like Lawrence. It adopted what seemed like an ironic tone (the one where you say the opposite of what you mean for humor or emphasis), but came off as sarcastic (a more negative, off-putting form of irony).

This email really could have used a face, a voice, and some wildly gesticulating hands to get its point across, which, when it was first conceived many months ago, it was going to have–because it was part of a very loose script for a video that, at least in concept, could have been spot-on with its irony.

Alas, it was just words on a screen queued up in an email (without the accompanying video, which was never produced, much less included in the email), and then forgotten about… until it went out to some of our most interested (and interesting) students yesterday.

And for that, we’re sorry, and embarrassed… and hopeful that those students and their parents didn’t take us literally, because, well, of course we want them to apply; they’re interested and interesting students.

Since we are an educational institution, we will share a couple of lessons here. (Woohoo, lessons at our expense!)*

Lesson one is for all other colleges who email prospective students (when I last checked, that would be all other colleges): don’t queue up emails for a timed delivery if they don’t have all the right pieces in place.

Lesson two. Refer to lesson one.

*Stage direction for “Woohoo, lessons at our expense!”: force a smile, speak overly enthusiastically, add ironic thumbs-up.