Applying early

[Jchen14]

Hi all!

 

As the 2017 cycle comes to a close, I’ve been preparing for the next cycle (2nd try). I applied in October of this year because I was going to wait until I retook the GRE and accumulate more PCE.

 

How important is applying as soon as the cycle opens up in April even if programs aren’t rolling admissions?

 

Thank you!

 

 

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[UGoLong]

From what I’ve seen, you want to apply early enough for all of your supporting materials (recommendations, transcripts, test scores, etc) to be there well before the closing date for the program.

Processing applications is a time-consuming process and faculty may get a bunch to review at one time. I can’t imagine being told “Here’s another one for you to review.” But if your supporting documents aren’t there, you could easily miss being considered in the first batch to be reviewed.

You can always send in updates after your submission to update HCE, eyc.


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[PACrankset]

The fact is that schools start reviewing applicants when they feel like it. None of the schools I applied to had rolling admissions but all their interview offers were out before their application deadlines passed. Applying early ensures that your application is in the mix from the start and you won’t miss an opportunity to interview somewhere because they ran out of slots. It also means that the stress of the application process is done and you can kick back and wait for responses. Also by early that typically means before Mid June, CASPA has a lot of application to verify and once you get past early to mid June it can be upwards of a week to get verified. This is in comparison to applying in May when it may only take 1-2days to verify.

[Jchen14]

The fact is that schools start reviewing applicants when they feel like it. None of the schools I applied to had rolling admissions but all their interview offers were out before their application deadlines passed. Applying early ensures that your application is in the mix from the start and you won’t miss an opportunity to interview somewhere because they ran out of slots. It also means that the stress of the application process is done and you can kick back and wait for responses. Also by early that typically means before Mid June, CASPA has a lot of application to verify and once you get past early to mid June it can be upwards of a week to get verified. This is in comparison to applying in May when it may only take 1-2days to verify.

Thanks for the help. The application opens in April - I plan on applying pretty much as soon as it opens up because I’ll have all of my materials ready. The only thing I’ll need to update are LORs, PS, and GRE scores.


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[saleem]

On 12/2/2017 at 11:53 PM, Jchen14 said:

 

Hi all!

 

As the 2017 cycle comes to a close, I’ve been preparing for the next cycle (2nd try). I applied in October of this year because I was going to wait until I retook the GRE and accumulate more PCE.

 

How important is applying as soon as the cycle opens up in April even if programs aren’t rolling admissions?

 

Thank you!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

applying early is beneficial for several reasons

For me, it is important since it gives you time to catch errors on your caspa application. I had to call caspa a lot because 2 of my undergrad classes were counted as science courses when they weren't and it was making a difference on my calculated sGPA. 

however

I don't think applying early is more important than having a complete application. I submitted end of July, mostly because something didn't feel right on my personal statement and I actually ended up writing a whole new ps that was much better in my opinion. 

Good Luck! :) 

[Jchen14]

16 minutes ago, saleem said:

applying early is beneficial for several reasons

For me, it is important since it gives you time to catch errors on your caspa application. I had to call caspa a lot because 2 of my undergrad classes were counted as science courses when they weren't and it was making a difference on my calculated sGPA. 

however

I don't think applying early is more important than having a complete application. I submitted end of July, mostly because something didn't feel right on my personal statement and I actually ended up writing a whole new ps that was much better in my opinion. 

Good Luck! :) 

CASPA messed up your sGPA calculation? How did you catch that? Moreover, how did you know what your sGPA was in CASPA? 

I'm definitely going to apply early this cycle. I'll have peace of mind and will give me a buffer for mistakes.

[BearDown]

set yourself a hard deadline of July 1. A couple hundred more hours of PCE is meh in the grand scheme of things

[saleem]

On 12/5/2017 at 6:07 PM, Jchen14 said:

CASPA messed up your sGPA calculation? How did you catch that? Moreover, how did you know what your sGPA was in CASPA? 

I'm definitely going to apply early this cycle. I'll have peace of mind and will give me a buffer for mistakes.

They did, however, I understand that errors happen. You can view your sGPA and cGPA calculated by Caspa by downloading your submitted application. Also, on the downloaded application, you can see your list of classes taken and what subject they are counted as. After submitting my application and viewing my Caspa transcript and calculated GPA, I caught that error of my freshmen seminar class being counted as a science course. I had to send an email and make calls but in the end, after sending a course description from my school's website everything was fixed. 

I'm not sure how common these errors are but the volume of applications that CASPA receives, it's just good to check once for any errors that can be spotted. 

[pastudentw]

I also had an error on my GPA calculations. I did my own transcript entry but had a chemistry class that wasn't calculated as a science course or as a chemistry course when it had the CHEM prefix on it. They fixed it after a phone call but something to keep in mind with your own application and timing your application.

Plan on applying early and give an early deadline to the people writing your LORs. Ask them months in advance. They can write up a word doc now and upload/copy paste it easily when they get the CASPA invite.

[Jchen14]

On 12/6/2017 at 1:40 PM, BearDown said:

set yourself a hard deadline of July 1. A couple hundred more hours of PCE is meh in the grand scheme of things

 

I'd have to disagree. I'm only 22 and have around 700 PCE. I am a nontraditional student because I'm under 25 so I think the more PCE I have right now, the better. Contrastly, a traditional student's app who has around 10k PCE will likely not be impacted as much by another 1k-2k PCE, for example.

[BearDown]

8 hours ago, Jchen14 said:

I'd have to disagree. I'm only 22 and have around 700 PCE. I am a nontraditional student because I'm under 25 so I think the more PCE I have right now, the better. Contrastly, a traditional student's app who has around 10k PCE will likely not be impacted as much by another 1k-2k PCE, for example.

Im sorry to give a dose of reality but I applied this year at 22 (currently accepted into Thomas Jefferson) as well. I received no breaks in the amount of PCE I had from age- which was still around 3000. Nor was my age mentioned at any interview. Your application is still viewed with the rest and it is STILL paramount to apply early.

[Jchen14]

Im sorry to give a dose of reality but I applied this year at 22 (currently accepted into Thomas Jefferson) as well. I received no breaks in the amount of PCE I had from age- which was still around 3000. Nor was my age mentioned at any interview. Your application is still viewed with the rest and it is STILL paramount to apply early.

I concur that it’s paramount of apply early. I’m not saying that’s it’s okay to put off the caspa app until last minute. All I’m saying is that PCE for an applicant that has little to none is more impactful when compared to an applicant that has a large amount.


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[Aware]

20 hours ago, Jchen14 said:

I'd have to disagree. I'm only 22 and have around 700 PCE. I am a nontraditional student because I'm under 25 so I think the more PCE I have right now, the better. Contrastly, a traditional student's app who has around 10k PCE will likely not be impacted as much by another 1k-2k PCE, for example.

When you put in your PCE in CASPA you can denote that you're still currently working at X company for Y amount of hours per week. It wouldn't make sense to hold off submitting your application just to put more hours in. A program will know when you submitted your application and can do the math themselves how many more hours you have accrued or will accrued by matriculation/interview/whatever. 

I'm hesitant to post this because it may be an anomaly and I don't want to set a bad example, but I applied in literally the last hour to a program that says it has rolling admission and I was invited to its second round of interviews. However, this was its supplemental application and my CASPA had long been verified by then. Historically, this program didn't send out interviews until shortly after its deadline, so again, this is probably an anomaly and I would still encourage you to apply early especially given your situation.