Scare of a lifetime: incomplete applications

[Regenerative Christine]

So I get an email from the department claiming that admissions states that my application is incomplete-when in reality everything was turned in way before the deadline. I literally rushed to the student portal and saw that my application status was still complete.

 

Spending the morning ping-ponging between phone calls with the department and the office of graduate admissions probably shaved a couple of years off my life + addition of some white hairs. WHEW what a scare.

 

Anyone else run into that kind of terror??

Edited March 6, 2013 by stay serene christine

[Enamored]

I can understand how that must have felt! I'm in a similar situation. I am an international student with an undergraduate degree from a South Asian university and a Masters degree from a university in the US. Two out of the five programs I've applied to required official copy of undergraduate transcript. The problem - my undergraduate university does not have an online transcript request system. It requires students to visit the registrar's office in person to request official copies of the transcript, which is impossible for me because I'm in the US. 

 

I have had to call and email the Admissions staff at both universities many times to confirm that they understood my situation and that my application was forwarded to the AdComm for review. I received positive feedback from both universities, but one university still hasn't changed my application status to 'complete.' The grad admissions office said my application was forwarded to the AdComm, but I don't feel very good when I see "Application Incomplete" in the status page every time I log in. 

[daydreamer254]

I was in this situation as well with my official transcripts. Thankfully admissions caught their own mistake and took the "missing official transcripts" off of my Incompleted Tasks list on my student portal. Phew!

[Inyo]

I applied to a range of schools, including one where I am bit overqualified for the program but it's very good research fit. The application was due Jan 15th. Come February 1st, I get out of an important, long meeting at work to find an email from my POI saying "We're processing applications and I don't see yours. It's fine if you decided not to apply, but I wanted to double check." 

 

PANIC set it. While I was in the midst of sending the "I swear I applied! I can send you the saved "application submitted page" and my pdf version!" he emailed again to say "Never mind, we found it. For some reason our system decided to switch your middle and last names. Sorry about that, we have a new system with some bugs." I nearly had a heart attack!  

 

I also sent one other application to a (similar) but wrong program. Fortunately the admin assistant caught it and emailed me to check. She switched everything around, but I thought to myself "Well, if they know I can't even get the paperwork right, there's no way they'll admit me..."

 

I am currently deciding between those two schools   You can recover from paperwork disasters! 

[spacezeppelin]

I got an email a MONTH after I submitted my application that they didnt have my transcripts...I completely freaked out. It was my top choice school as well. They had my "numbers" listed on the application, but obviously they really need the transcripts. I had them rushed delivered again (I did send them once already) then waited for about a week.

 

I called again and they were STILL missing. At that point I totally lost my cool. I called my undergraduate admissions office to ask if they sent them, and the response I got was, "yeah, we are pretty sure." WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

 

They did eventually arrive but they got there two days before the deadline the school gave me to get them in. It was incredibly stressful. Honestly, I'm still kind of worried that it affected me negatively. My grades are okay, but they have a STEEP upward trend over all and all my majors grades are far above my average (I had a bit of an o-chem / calculus debacle). I wanted them to see all my nice grades before making an initial judgement based only on the overall. :/

[Regenerative Christine]

Man, I hate that whole game of being given the run around and have us experience these near death experiences. 

 

The fact that when you call they sound so nonchalant and you're on the other end sweating bullets! Horrible. Dealing with transcripts is another story... 

 

With all the $$$ that these schools have been taking from us, we should have transcripts submitted for free. Not just the first two or three, but ALL of them. 

[margarets]

I'm currently sorting out a situation with transcripts.  One side is saying "we sent them and the school (that I'm applying to) confirmed receipt", and the other is saying "we never got them".   Ahhhh!!!  It'll get sorted out eventually, but it's no fun.   I don't want to be a pest, but they are making me be a pest!

[crackthesky]

That's awful!

 

I have a couple degrees from the same institution so when my transcripts were sent, the online portal claimed that only one was sent when in fact, they were all combined.

 

Luckily I caught this and e-mailed them about it before it ever became an issue.

 

I'm glad everything was okay, though! All is well that ends well.

[DarwinsBones]

I had to hard copy send in my SOI and transcripts to one of my institutions and I accidentally sent them my draft where when I got to talking about the university I just had a bullet with "TALK ABOUT UNIVERSITY STUFF" and nothing else! I was in so much of a rush I did not check my file I printed. Luckily a student worker got my application before they read it to make sure it was complete and emailed me telling me this. They allowed me to email my actual SOI and just printed it and inserted it.