Heads Up For Online App. SAample Uploads

[Medievalmaniac]

Hey, all - just wanted to note for posterity and future grad school applicants, that if you are uploading a document with special characters in it to the applyyourself online application form as supplemental material, review it carefully for changes and omissions of such characters. In my case, I just checked to verify that it had uploaded completely, then thought it was fine. I went back when I was alerted by the grad school that all application materials had been forwarded to the department but supplemental materials are my responsibility (I'm very compulsive about these sorts of things). Looking through my uploaded writing sample, I saw that the German umlauts and the Old English loghs in my original, carefully proofread paper were all transformed into stars/dots when the program converted the document to PDF. A quick email to the department secretary got a note placed in my file alerting readers of the paper to the situation, so all is well, but I thought it might be useful to others to know to look specifically for those sorts of things in a converted document.

[csquare]

Wait, so did you upload the document as a PDF and then the PDF was subsequently affected by the ApplyYourself system? Or did you upload it as, say, a doc file which ApplyYourself converted to a PDF for you? If it's the latter case, I've always uploaded my documents in PDF format to ensure that what I see is what everyone else sees - I highly recommend that.

[Medievalmaniac]

Wait, so did you upload the document as a PDF and then the PDF was subsequently affected by the ApplyYourself system? Or did you upload it as, say, a doc file which ApplyYourself converted to a PDF for you? If it's the latter case, I've always uploaded my documents in PDF format to ensure that what I see is what everyone else sees - I highly recommend that.

I converted the documents to a PDF, but my program may be an older version...? All I know is that I converted the documents from .doc to .pdf, but somehow when they went through Applyyourself, those characters disappeared into stars and dots.

HOWEVER - it may also be that the computer I was checking them on had an outdated viewer that didn't read those characters, and the actual upload was fine...?

Either way - I thought it was worth noting for future applicants' benefit - better safe than sorry.