Hi everyone. Some questions about additional info update for college application

Hi @Jai123456,

Thanks for your question. This is a "gaming the system" question so no one here on a CV can make you do anything. Your decision to include a grade on your online course which is a work in progress raises some eyebrows for most college admissions teams.

I can share what I would do if I took say an online college course like Psychology or Calculus. Let's say that I'm getting an A in these 2 courses but the final grade will not be given until I take the final exam by 12/14 and the online school issues the grade by 12/21 or sooner. That is still prior to the Common app deadline for Ivy league colleges like UPenn or Columbia which is 1/1/23.

So if I feel confident that I will continue with my progress in the course and get an A on both finals, then I would wait until I get my final grade prior to entering it on the Common App for these schools. Why? Because I know the deadline for these schools is still forward in the future, not today or tomorrow, or next week. If the deadline for UPenn was 12/1 today, then I might enter my current grade in the class because the final exam is in the future past the application deadline. But since the application deadline is a month from now, I am risking "gaming the system" with 2 As without knowing if I'll get 2 As on those final exams by entering them into the Common App and pretending that it doesn't matter if UPenn or Columbia know the truth about my actual scores.

The problem with taking online courses that either are tied to your transcript as dual enrollment credits or "no HS credit" online college courses, is that both UPenn and Columbia are going to ask you for the official transcript from the colleges independently of your HS transcript as a backup for making the correct admissions decisions. Say you cheat, and get admitted to UPenn and Columbia and put down you got As in these 2 classes. Sometime in February when your HS counselor has to submit your mid-year report, both UPenn and Columbia will reach out to you to forward an official transcript from ABC school or XYZ college where you took the online classes. If you don't do this, they will render your application incomplete. If you submit the official transcript from ABC or XYZ and learn that you got 2 (As), you are in the clear. If you actually got a 2 (Bs) in the 2 classes, then they will flag your application with the following questions.

-Did this applicant deliberately try to game the Common App?

-Did something happen in December to this person's physical or mental well-being that prevented them from performing to the stated standard of excellence they indicated on the common app?

-Did the HS counselor instruct the student to do this because the school is gaming the system?

If you are honest and wait until you get your final grade and then submit your final grade on the UPenn or other college applications, you have nothing to worry about. If you feel the pressure to get into a school is too great not to take the risk of getting caught, then I feel that you are just another victim of the current toxic culture that is the college admissions culture of 2022-23.

I'll give you an analogy. Recently Hans Niemann beat top-rated Magnus Carlsen at a chess championship. Magnus withdrew from the tournament because in his heart and mind felt that Hans had figured out a way to gain access to an open-source chess engine like Stockfish during the match. He couldn't prove it but it since the winning chess moves mimicked the kind of crazy chess play that an AI bot would make, Carlsen ditched the tourney. Magnus is still highly respected however there is a lot of controversy surrounding Hans Neiman because of his past cheating history and how he took down Magnus with unusual chess play.

So if you are not 100% transparent and accurate about what you put down on your common app, that is a violation of the agreement you enter when you submit your common app at the end of the application where they ask you if you submitted completely accurate information best to your knowledge or not.

I would say that more than 85% of students follow this process to the tee, while perhaps 10% make some inaccurate assumption and mistakenly put more hours on their ECs or volunteering, or enter a grade wrong or a section of the ACT wrong. But it's the 5% who actually try to game the application with or without their HS counselors that either stub in interim grades or avoid entering them entirely because the student is failing the first semester of senior year. And there are others who blatantly inflate the importance of their ECs by lying about how much money they raised, lying about the impact on their community and even making up fake leadership titles and fake papers they wrote and fake awards they received.

College admissions is not a foolproof system and there always will be cheaters who make fake IDs for their smart friends to take the SAT or ACT for them or have their parents pay for an internship that sounds impressive that they never have to go to. But you have to decide for yourself what you are willing to do to get into the dream colleges. Are you willing to cheat to get in?

No one can make that decision but you. But the fact you raise this as an option means to me that there are hundreds and thousands of HS students trying to figure out how to game the system to their advantage by checking a different Race on their application or stating they are a Trans kid when they are not or having their parents rent a cheap apartment in poor zip code while they actually live in a mansion somewhere else. There is a very dangerous toxic college admissions culture that is already here and I'm 100% positive that all Ivy, Elite, and Top Liberal arts colleges are aware of this. I'm also 100% positive that if they find out your application was falsified for any reason, they can still rescind your diploma after you graduate from that college.

No judgment here, but do what you think it best.

Hi @Jai123456!

If a college permits updates, there'll be space on the applicant portal to do so.

Whether you should submit additional info or not depends on how significant the info is. If your original application shows a great academic record and if you're submitting similar grades for ongoing courses, admissions officers won't perceive it as an exceptional achievement. However, if your current grades show improvement from your past, they can support your application. Either way, submitting grades won't do any harm, but in the first case, don't expect your grades to sway the decision.

Hope this helps!