Just Sent a Secondary with wrong school name

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
B

BiologyNerd

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2012
Messages
85
Reaction score
1
Members don't see this ad.
Searched the forums, I couldn't find this. I just reused an essay that had another school name in it, and sent it in. Lol. Amateur mistake I know, but do you guys think I'm done for at that school now?
 
BiologyNerd said:
Searched the forums, I couldn't find this. I just reused an essay that had another school name in it, and sent it in. Lol. Amateur mistake I know, but do you guys think I'm done for at that school now?
Click to expand...

What was the essay about and under which prompts did you use it?

I mean, not the greatest but definitely something you can recover from if its not the "why this school?" question.
 
BiologyNerd said:
Searched the forums, I couldn't find this. I just reused an essay that had another school name in it, and sent it in. Lol. Amateur mistake I know, but do you guys think I'm done for at that school now?
Click to expand...

Daaaang! I am very sorry about that. At first when I read the responses to the thread,, I assumed people were being sarcastic and there a way to combat the situation.

Try not to burn out with all these secondaries. Having said said that, I cannot wait until I start filling out mine. I love writing essays.
 
Catalystik said:
This.
Click to expand...

Is it really?

I mean, I can see how it looks TERRIBLE but as long as it wasn't a "this other school is amazing and my top choice" or something explictly to do with that school.. I'd be surprised if adcoms weren't somewhat sympathetic.

If it was just a "At [other school], I hope to continue my work tutoring underserved kids in the area" ... I can't see that really being that bad.

but i really wouldn't know.

give us the context it was used in!

EDIT: I can't imagine adcoms aren't slightly receptive to errors of this sort that aren't major (as in, alluding, not talking about the school itself).. It probably happens way too often and the fact that you forgot to update the acronym for one of your many secondaries doesn't really speak much about your ability to become a great physician.

I can see how if you spent the entire essay talking about one school, how that could be an auto-reject but if it's just in reference, shoot them an update email apologizing for the error.
 
Jepstein30 said:
Is it really?

I mean, I can see how it looks TERRIBLE but as long as it wasn't a "this other school is amazing and my top choice" or something explictly to do with that school.. I'd be surprised if adcoms weren't somewhat sympathetic.

If it was just a "At [other school], I hope to continue my work tutoring underserved kids in the area" ... I can't see that really being that bad.

but i really wouldn't know.

give us the context it was used in!

EDIT: I can't imagine adcoms aren't slightly receptive to errors of this sort that aren't major (as in, alluding, not talking about the school itself).. It probably happens way too often and the fact that you forgot to update the acronym for one of your many secondaries doesn't really speak much about your ability to become a great physician.

I can see how if you spent the entire essay talking about one school, how that could be an auto-reject but if it's just in reference, shoot them an update email apologizing for the error.
Click to expand...

There are thousands of kids with betters stats, more impressive extracurriculars, AND used the correct school name. You're done.
 
Slack3r said:
There are thousands of kids with betters stats, more impressive extracurriculars, AND used the correct school name. You're done.
Click to expand...

Eh, I don't think any schools make such important decisions based on three to five letters in an essay. Everyone is human and makes mistakes.. this one is hardly that big.

OP, let us know how that goes though. Will be interesting. I'm in the minority that thinks a well-written email can make up for the foolish mistake, I guess.

still would like to know the context though because I agree that if it was used in any sense talking about the school itself... you're done.
 
RogueUnicorn said:
it's over
Click to expand...

Catalystik said:
This.
Click to expand...

+infinity.

Jepstein30 said:
Is it really?

I mean, I can see how it looks TERRIBLE but as long as it wasn't a "this other school is amazing and my top choice" or something explictly to do with that school.. I'd be surprised if adcoms weren't somewhat sympathetic.

If it was just a "At [other school], I hope to continue my work tutoring underserved kids in the area" ... I can't see that really being that bad.

but i really wouldn't know.

give us the context it was used in!

EDIT: I can't imagine adcoms aren't slightly receptive to errors of this sort that aren't major (as in, alluding, not talking about the school itself).. It probably happens way too often and the fact that you forgot to update the acronym for one of your many secondaries doesn't really speak much about your ability to become a great physician.

I can see how if you spent the entire essay talking about one school, how that could be an auto-reject but if it's just in reference, shoot them an update email apologizing for the error.
Click to expand...

Jepstein30 said:
Eh, I don't think any schools make such important decisions based on three to five letters in an essay. Everyone is human and makes mistakes.. this one is hardly that big.

OP, let us know how that goes though. Will be interesting. I'm in the minority that thinks a well-written email can make up for the foolish mistake, I guess.

still would like to know the context though because I agree that if it was used in any sense talking about the school itself... you're done.
Click to expand...


Right.. That email would look something like this.

Dear XYZ Adcom (make sure you type the right school this time),

I've been using the same secondary essay for every school possible and when I copy and pasted it into your application, I forgot to change it to the correct school. I was just so overwhelmed by the complexity of copying and pasting that I completely forgot to put the correct school name.

Please forgive me,

I really want to attend your school.

Regards,

******ed pre-med.
 
I'm going to write an email and see how it goes. I agree it was a stupid mistake. I'll update this forum when something comes up.
 
BiologyNerd said:
I'm going to write an email and see how it goes. I agree it was a stupid mistake. I'll update this forum when something comes up.
Click to expand...

what context did you use it in?

and medpr, i'm pretty sure every school knows people re-use secondary essays and expect it..

am I really supposed to write fifteen different essays about a challenge I faced for each of the school's I'm applying to that has that essay topic? c'mon..
 
They have thousands of applicants and around 150 seats. Do you think they would pick someone who didn't take a few hours to write an essay for them?
 
Sending an email isn't going to help. If anything, it's just going to draw their attention to something they might not have noticed otherwise. That said, you're probably boned at that school either way.
 
Jepstein30 said:
what context did you use it in?

and medpr, i'm pretty sure every school knows people re-use secondary essays and expect it..

am I really supposed to write fifteen different essays about a challenge I faced for each of the school's I'm applying to that has that essay topic? c'mon..
Click to expand...

Yes, they know it. But common sense dictates they expect that for something as important as medical school, that you would be careful enough to make sure something like this doesn't happen. Letting this slip is like everybody else said - it reflects very poorly on you.

And seriously, you won't find short-cuts in this process. Taking even a few minutes to at least re-read a copy/pasted essay, much less an hour or two to modify it for the prompt wouldn't kill you.

Good luck going forward - at least it was just one school!
 
Last edited:
If it makes you feel any better I misspelled johns Hopkins as john hopkins in one of my secondary essays. I was pissed because I knew about the common mispronunciation beforehand and still managed to make the error. At least my mistake was for a school that I had an almost non existent chance of getting in to. Good luck OP hope it works out for you
 
If I was an adcom, I would probably round file it instantly because it shows you cannot take 2 seconds to replace school name 1 with school name 2. I really would care less if you used the same essay, but the fact that you didn't even read it over before submitting would do it for me personally.
 
Last edited:
I can see how that might happen, I mean it's a common question and the answer doesn't really change from school to school. These stupid mistakes happen. With that said, you're pretty much ****ed at that school. :laugh:
 
yeah i made a similar mistake with not following directions in submitting an essay. just take it as a lesson learned to be more careful next time. gotta take our losses man
 
DAPI said:
If I was an adcom, I would probably round file it instantly because it shows you cannot take 2 seconds to replace school name 1 with school name 2. I really would care less if you used the same essay, but the fact that you didn't even read it over before submitting would do it for me personally.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can see that. Definitely a concern for me because the school is in my top 5 choices. I'm hoping that they might forgive the mistake. I know the odds are against me.

Digressing, but you have the coolest MDapps I have ever seen.
 
Thanks guys! I had some free time between submitting my primary and getting my job lol. Also, I really liked other MDApps like NikeNaylor's and CodeRedDew's that were very well done and copied some of the aspects of theirs.
 
Jepstein30 said:
Eh, I don't think any schools make such important decisions based on three to five letters in an essay. Everyone is human and makes mistakes.. this one is hardly that big.

OP, let us know how that goes though. Will be interesting. I'm in the minority that thinks a well-written email can make up for the foolish mistake, I guess.

still would like to know the context though because I agree that if it was used in any sense talking about the school itself... you're done.
Click to expand...

They do. You're not some special flower and, frankly, they have other options.

It's...


game-over.jpg
 
Jepstein30 said:
what context did you use it in?

and medpr, i'm pretty sure every school knows people re-use secondary essays and expect it..

am I really supposed to write fifteen different essays about a challenge I faced for each of the school's I'm applying to that has that essay topic? c'mon..
Click to expand...

You're far wiser than me and it's obvious you're going places. I'm sorry I even tried to sway your stance.
 
music2doc said:
They do. You're not some special flower and, frankly, they have other options.

It's...
Click to expand...

MedPR said:
Great way to justify typing in the wrong school name. You're far wiser than me and it's obvious you're going places.
Click to expand...

You guys do realize I am not the OP and did not do this, right?

If I was MedPR, I would write "Good job with reading comprehension here. You're far wiser than me and it's obvious you're going places." But (thankfully) I'm not.

And also, that wasn't justifying anything. Never in this thread did I ever justify the mistake. That was a simple statement regarding the use and re-use of secondary essays. How you connected that to justifying the OP's error, I'll never know.

I like how people act as if I know nothing about how adcoms view things (which I don't) but they somehow know all the inner workings (which they don't). I'm sure it definitely hurts to have made this mistake but I simply cannot see any adcom dismissing YEARS of hard work on the basis of one simple error.

This isn't like he got caught drunk driving or cheating on an exam. You're talking about three letters here.. People make mistakes and in the relative grand scheme of things, this ranks pretty low.

Will it hurt your chances? Yep, probably a ton. Will it get you an auto-rejection? I don't think so. It certainly doesn't increase the already bad odds one has in applying. If a school otherwise thinks you are a great fit for their class, I don't think three letters is going to change that much. You're definitely going to have a harder time convincing them of that fact though.
 
Jepstein30 said:
If I was MedPR, I would write "Good job with reading comprehension here. You're far wiser than me and it's obvious you're going places." But (thankfully) I'm not.
.
Click to expand...

👍 I like this comeback 🙂
 
BigBlueBear said:
👍 I like this comeback 🙂
Click to expand...

I like how he edited the post after I quoted and pointed out how stupid it was.

Anyways, again to the OP, send an email. Worst that can happen is they reject you which odds are they were going to do anyways before the mistake.

Let us know how it goes.
 
Jepstein30 said:
You guys do realize I am not the OP and did not do this, right?

If I was MedPR, I would write "Good job with reading comprehension here. You're far wiser than me and it's obvious you're going places." But (thankfully) I'm not.

And also, that wasn't justifying anything. Never in this thread did I ever justify the mistake. That was a simple statement regarding the use and re-use of secondary essays. How you connected that to justifying the OP's error, I'll never know.

I like how people act as if I know nothing about how adcoms view things (which I don't) but they somehow know all the inner workings (which they don't). I'm sure it definitely hurts to have made this mistake but I simply cannot see any adcom dismissing YEARS of hard work on the basis of one simple error.

This isn't like he got caught drunk driving or cheating on an exam. You're talking about three letters here.. People make mistakes and in the relative grand scheme of things, this ranks pretty low.

Will it hurt your chances? Yep, probably a ton. Will it get you an auto-rejection? I don't think so. It certainly doesn't increase the already bad odds one has in applying. If a school otherwise thinks you are a great fit for their class, I don't think three letters is going to change that much. You're definitely going to have a harder time convincing them of that fact though.
Click to expand...

Without joining the insult slinging, how much hard work you or I have put in doesn't matter to adcoms. They really don't care when they have ten times as many applicants as seats to fill. They have no reason to want to take a chance on someone, they simply don't care enough about an individual applicant to need to overlook anything when there are so many qualified applicants without that type of error to choose from. They don't care about you, I, or the OP. They don't need to care, so how much hard work was put in is absolutely meaningless. They begin caring about us when we are students at their school. Before that, not so much.
 
FYI


I wrote the wrong school name for UCSF in my secondary. I emailed the admissions office within the hour and they actually unlocked my secondary in order for me to update it. I went back and forth in my head on whether or not to contact them, but I did and it worked out fine. Definitely try it.
 
What if you used the wrong name with your patients? You could kill someone. I'm sure the medical schools would agree
 
theseeker4 said:
Without joining the insult slinging, how much hard work you or I have put in doesn't matter to adcoms. They really don't care when they have ten times as many applicants as seats to fill. They have no reason to want to take a chance on someone, they simply don't care enough about an individual applicant to need to overlook anything when there are so many qualified applicants without that type of error to choose from. They don't care about you, I, or the OP. They don't need to care, so how much hard work was put in is absolutely meaningless. They begin caring about us when we are students at their school. Before that, not so much.
Click to expand...

Fivo said:
FYI


I wrote the wrong school name for UCSF in my secondary. I emailed the admissions office within the hour and they actually unlocked my secondary in order for me to update it. I went back and forth in my head on whether or not to contact them, but I did and it worked out fine. Definitely try it.
Click to expand...

Yea..

You guys are making adcoms out to be evil people that peruse applications to find any small flaw that will then cause them to chuck the application.

They, like us, are humans and know people make mistakes. Out of the many things people can do wrong in this process, writing the wrong 3 letters is no where near the worst.
 
I actually did this in an interview during my cycle... Oops. I think I wrote about it in either most bizarre interview moments or worst interview answers. I told someone at UPMC that I thought Ann arbor was awesome and I'd love to spend 4 years there... Oops.

And... Yeah it's over for the OP.
 
Jepstein30 said:
Yea..

You guys are making adcoms out to be evil people that peruse applications to find any small flaw that will then cause them to chuck the application.

They, like us, are humans and know people make mistakes. Out of the many things people can do wrong in this process, writing the wrong 3 letters is no where near the worst.
Click to expand...

Uh no, not when it's obvious that the mistake was made because of laziness. They have the luxury of choice when they accept less than 10% of applicants, many of whom are acceptable candidates. I heard an admissions committee member at MIT put it this way, "If you write in your application that Harvard is your dream school and you can't see yourself anywhere else...well, it's our job to make dreams come true."
 
Just to beat a dead horse: you're done at that school. I'll be doing interviews for my school this year and in our admissions meeting they said if applicants have more than 1 or 2, MAYBE 3 typos (read: misspellings, grammatical errors, not anything near what you did), they stop taking the application seriously.

Also, if Catalystik says you're done, there really shouldn't be any need to continue the conversation. He has kind of an infinite amount of wisdom on the subject.
 
Fivo said:
FYI


I wrote the wrong school name for UCSF in my secondary. I emailed the admissions office within the hour and they actually unlocked my secondary in order for me to update it. I went back and forth in my head on whether or not to contact them, but I did and it worked out fine. Definitely try it.
Click to expand...

Unless you've been offered an interview, I don't see how this shows how everything "worked out fine".
 
i wrote george washington on one of my georgetown essays last year, and got rejected. whether that typo had anything to do with the rejection, I'll never know. i honestly think I would have been embarrassed to go to the interview with that written in one of my essays, knowing that my interviewer would've read through that beforehand. just my opinion. OP, it happens, but i'd also agree that you shouldn't expect much from that school anymore....
 
I know someone that did this for Pitt and still got in (although this was about 10 years ago, and he was an amazing applicant). Don't think too hard about it or you'll drive yourself crazy. I wouldn't email them about it or anything...just see what happens and if they mention it in an interview, then you can explain yourself.
 
Jepstein30 said:
You guys do realize I am not the OP and did not do this, right?

If I was MedPR, I would write "Good job with reading comprehension here. You're far wiser than me and it's obvious you're going places." But (thankfully) I'm not.

And also, that wasn't justifying anything. Never in this thread did I ever justify the mistake. That was a simple statement regarding the use and re-use of secondary essays. How you connected that to justifying the OP's error, I'll never know.

I like how people act as if I know nothing about how adcoms view things (which I don't) but they somehow know all the inner workings (which they don't). I'm sure it definitely hurts to have made this mistake but I simply cannot see any adcom dismissing YEARS of hard work on the basis of one simple error.

This isn't like he got caught drunk driving or cheating on an exam. You're talking about three letters here.. People make mistakes and in the relative grand scheme of things, this ranks pretty low.

Will it hurt your chances? Yep, probably a ton. Will it get you an auto-rejection? I don't think so. It certainly doesn't increase the already bad odds one has in applying. If a school otherwise thinks you are a great fit for their class, I don't think three letters is going to change that much. You're definitely going to have a harder time convincing them of that fact though.
Click to expand...
it's a big mistake. it's over unless some miracle happens. some of us do know what we're talking about so i don't know why you're trying to argue based on your crack notion of fairness
 
kpcrew said:
Uh no, not when it's obvious that the mistake was made because of laziness. They have the luxury of choice when they accept less than 10% of applicants, many of whom are acceptable candidates. I heard an admissions committee member at MIT put it this way, "If you write in your application that Harvard is your dream school and you can't see yourself anywhere else...well, it's our job to make dreams come true."
Click to expand...

It depends on the context you use it in. If it has anything to do with school-specific information, you're dead in the water. If it's a "why this school?" essay, don't even bother sending an email. If you speak about any of the aspects of the other school, don't bother as well.

If it's instead something like the OP did: "At XYZ, I hope to continue my commitment towards [activity ABC]" it is no where near as bad considering it has NOTHING to do with either school itself. This is the type of mistake I can see an adcom overlooking if the rest of the app is strong and they already think the person is a good fit.

I agree though. Most of the cases it is obvious if the mistake was made due to laziness (and if it was, the result will not be good). But to say it is a clear cut "auto-rejection" no matter the context used is a little too extreme IMO.

There's a difference between a casual reference (At XYZ..) and rambling about how great another school is (XYZ is my dream school). The first is a simple mistake, the second is a rather significant error that no one can recover from.
 
Jepstein30 said:
Yea..

You guys are making adcoms out to be evil people that peruse applications to find any small flaw that will then cause them to chuck the application.

They, like us, are humans and know people make mistakes. Out of the many things people can do wrong in this process, writing the wrong 3 letters is no where near the worst.
Click to expand...

This isn't a small flaw. It's a huge oversight. If you're applying for a job at company A and mention company B's name by mistake, there is no way company A is going to give you a job.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

BlueBudgie
Withdrawing from WL for school I sent a LOI?
Replies
26
Views
2K
Mr.Smile12
Mr.Smile12
P
Contacting admissions to see if they sent out secondaries
Replies
7
Views
1K
WildWing
WildWing
M
Engaging with diversity secondary prompt?
Replies
3
Views
721
mayziemed
M
P
  • Locked
Communities you identify with secondary
Replies
2
Views
263
premed2026?
P
N
Help with school list
Replies
2
Views
351
Mr.Smile12
Mr.Smile12
Top