Admissions Advice...

Keep It Neat

When Dartmouth College rejected Ramond King last December, he blasted Radiohead's "Let Down" and tried to figure out why he wasn't at least put on the wait list. He had a 3.9 grade-point average his senior year, took five Advanced Placement courses and won the headmaster's cup, an award to the student who showed the most personal growth at the Branson School in Ross, Calif.

A few weeks later, as he was finishing 13 applications, Mr. King's college counselor called with a possible explanation. On his application, where he'd described his course load, Ramond had spelled chemistry as "chemestry" and literature as "literatre." The errors appeared six times.

"When it happened, of course, I'm freaking out," Mr. King says. Before he'd sent that Dartmouth application, his mother, father and sister had studied each word, scouring for mistakes. But the errors were on a page he filled out on his own and gave to the guidance office to complete with recommendations.

In his next round of applications, the errors were corrected. This time, he was accepted to five schools, including Cornell, where he is now a freshman. He says blatant misspellings can be fatal to an application: "I try and laugh about it now," he says.

Advice: Check every section of an application immediately after finishing it, as well as before sending it. Many college counselors recommend printing out an online application and proofreading the hard copy.