Between now and January 15 (and even a little while after that!), the UGA Admissions Office will be receiving a huge volume of materials, both electronically and in the mail. Since it has been less than two hours since we have returned from our holiday break, please allow us time to get these materials into our system and make sure that you monitor your myStatus page. Deadlines are always a hectic time of year, and the January 15 one is the most stressful, as it is the final deadline for admissions materials. Here are a few suggestions for the next few weeks.
- Be patient, as UGA (and all the other colleges to which you are applying) are still trying to get back into the office, and it takes a while to get through all the materials.
- Make sure to check with your counselor, teacher, school official, boss, or whoever is sending in materials for you and make sure they have been sent, and remember that items sent through the mail take time to get to UGA.
- Do not wait until the deadline to do things! I repeat, do not wait until the deadline to do things! Yes, we will take applications that are submitted on midnight of the deadline, but this means that you are putting yourself in a position with no room for error. And please do not go to your counselor on January 15 and ask for materials to be sent. They will send it, but you are putting them in a tight spot of trying to do things while rushed, and this many times leads to errors.
- Make sure that your counselor and teacher writes your legal name on the forms/letters. If your name is Jonathan Taylor but you go by J.T., make sure that Jonathan Taylor is somewhere on the pages.
- Do not send in items by FedEx, overnight shipping, etc. Our deadlines for mailed items are a postmarked deadline, so I do not want you to have to pay $18 just to have a transcript sent in, when a basic stamp will take care of it just as well.
- Do not fax items to the admissions office! As I have said before, there is a reason that the shredder is right next to the fax machine. We do not accept official documents by fax, as transcripts, forms and rec. letters come out horrible when sent through the fax.
- Try not to use staples, as we just have to pull them out to scan the documents, and it makes the scanning process go slow and makes the separate sheets of paper stick together in the scanner. Ditto colorful binders! Paper clips are great (or better yet, electronic submission of materials!).
- As stated before, be patient. I am guessing that by about January 25, we will have most of the materials into our system that were sent in by the January 15 deadline.
And remember, Go Dawgs!
Hi This is Priscilla again, a US citizen from Hong Kong local school. My school does not follow the US system and I don't have any counselor helping me with the college application. How can I complete the counselor evaluation form? and due the difference in the grading again, the terms to represent semesters and courses are also different. How should I put it?
ReplyDeletePriscilla: I would suggest going to the academic head of the school (or someone similar) to do the evaluation form, and make sure that when the transcript is sent, that if possible a school profile with the school's grading scale is sent. We are used to a large range of international grading scales, so I would not worry about that.
ReplyDeleteHi - I got the application and payment in over the holidays, so am completed on my end. I am able to review that material, as well as my test scores under the MyStatus link. My teachers both sent their recommendation letters directly to the school in early November and the counselling office did the same. However, MyStatus says these are both pending. Since they were sent so long ago, does it take a while to match, or should I be concerned?
ReplyDeleteProspective Student from AE: Since you submitted your application over the holidays, and today is our first day back, we have had about 5 hours to start the process of matching things. Since your materials were sent in back in November, we have them in our "holding files", where we store materials that do not match up with applications. We then will go through the holding files over the next few days to match up materials with applicants (we had about 600 new applications come in during the holiday break). So give us a little while to match things up with your application (5 business days or so), and be patient, as we just pushed your application into our system about 3 hours ago.
ReplyDeleteThanks and I appreciate your fast response! I thought that might be the case but just wanted to make sure. peace
ReplyDeleteCan I ask my teachers to fill out the teacher's recommendation form for me online if I am from outside US? If yes, what should I put in the school code column?
ReplyDeleteAnon: International applicant's teachers can use this form, and I believe the code for international schools without their own high school code is 999999.
ReplyDeleteAnon: The default HS code for an international/foreign HS with no code given by the College Board is 999995.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter has asked her HS counselor to send in the transcript from the last semester so that the fall grades will be included but he said the grades won't be reflected on the transcript until the end of January. He said he would send in a copy of her reportcard next week. Is this acceptable? If not, what options do we have? We'd like to send one in to show the additional AP classes and grades from fall semester. Thanks
ReplyDeleteDenise: It is better to have it on an actual transcript, and we will be taking updated transcripts through the beginning of February (the only deadline beyond Jan. 15 is for the updated transcript, and it is Feb. 1). That is what I would suggest.
ReplyDeleteI have a question regarding my ACT score report. I recieved it in the mail today and at the top of the report it said "Social Security Number: Not Reported" When I signed up to test in December, I provided them with my SSN on the registration but now they're saying that it's not showing up in their system. Will the office at UGA be able to match my score with my application without my social security number? I called the ACT today and explained to them my situation and they said that I have to call the school and give them my ACT test ID in order for them to match them up. Can I call and have them do that?.
ReplyDeleteSantana: UGA's test score system can match a test score easily without an SSN if the full name and birthdate used on the application exactly matches the one on the exam. I would suggest that you find out when ACT is suppose to send the scores to UGA, and if in about 10 days after that date the test score has not shown up on the myStatus page, send an email to admproc@uga.edu and we will track down the score and match it manually (it generally means either the name is not an exact match or the birthdates are off, and it is not hard for us to do if we know about the unmatched score).
ReplyDeleteThank you DGraves for your answer. That sounds great.
ReplyDeleteDgraves:
ReplyDeleteI'm having some difficulty finding a link to UGA's 2010 Common Data Set. Do you know if UGA has released it yet? If so, where may I find it?
curiousdawg: Most Common Data Set information is maintained by a University's Office of Institutional Research (or similar office), which is the case at UGA. I would not have knowledge on when the 2010 Common Data Set would be available.
ReplyDeleteHello Mr Graves,
ReplyDeleteI recently submitted my app and I'm able to view my status. I saw that the office has recieved my SAT score but I also sent my ACT as well.. My SAT score was very poor for UGA's standards and I would prefer when reviewing my application that they only see my ACT score which is REALLY better than my SAT.
Can I call and have them remove my SAT and, if not, will seeing my really low SAT score work against me in an admissions decision?
Mowbray: In looking at an applicant, we are focused on the strongest scores, so if your ACT is stronger than your SAT, we will only look at your ACT. The same is true of subscores, as we only look at the highest subscores if you take the SAT or ACT multiple times. See http://ugaadmissions.blogspot.com/2010/06/test-scores-and-uga.html for more on this.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, you do not need to have your SAT scores removed (and it is a pain anyways), as it will not "work" against you.
ReplyDeleteOkay. I was just wondering because of my low SAT. Thank you very much for the good advice :)
ReplyDeleteHi, I am a Californian resident, and I finished my application and mailed all of the necessary items needed, but my application status says that my transcript hasn't been received. I know I'm supposed to wait and be patient, but the high school transcript was mailed(by the school) around December 17th or 18th. Do I just assume it's been received?
ReplyDeleteConcerned: I would suggest waiting until Friday, and if it has not shown up on the myStatus page, request another copy be sent. Remember, we were out from Dec. 24 - Jan. 3, so it has not been that long that we have had a chance to review incoming documents.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteis there a way for me to find out if my transcipt which I sent through gacollege411 is an updated one? On my status it said that my transcript has already been recieved but I just wanted to be sure that my grades are updated.
Kelly: There will be a date listed on your myStatus page for the HS transcript (it only goes by the month and year, so any transcript received in January will show 1/1/2011). If your first transcript was received prior to January, then the updated one will then show up as January when it is dropped into your file.
ReplyDeleteSo when my school has my transcript with my senior year grades(probably in about 2 weeks) I just send another one as well?
ReplyDeleteKelly: Yes, just send in an updated transcript so we can see your first semester grades.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
ReplyDelete