The essay is a vital part of your college application. It’s not only a place to showcase your writing skills, but also demonstrate your personality — the qualities you can’t reveal through your grades and test scores.
If you make a mistake or realize your essay isn’t quite what you want it to be, it’s nerve-wracking. What can you do? Is it possible to change it after you click submit?
You can make any number of changes to your Common App essay — and any other component of your application — once you’ve submitted it. However, these changes will not be reflected in applications that have already been submitted; they will only appear in future submissions. (The Common App likens your submission to dropping it in a mailbox.)
If you want to make changes to an essay you’ve already submitted to an institution, you will need to contact that school’s admissions office to see if it’s possible. We only recommend doing this if there’s a major error with your essay, as it won’t reflect well on your proofreading skills to try to slightly modify your essay after submission.
The best course of action is to ensure that your essay is polished and written to the best of your abilities before you submit it to any college. However, there are some circumstances under which you should make changes.
If you made a mistake, for example, you should try to fix it for future applications. (That doesn’t mean you should call up an admissions office over a misplaced comma — we’re talking major errors.) You also might want to change your essay if you plan to cover a similar topic for a specific school supplement. Or, if you got deferred, you may want to try to improve your essay for the regular admission cycle.
Before you do anything, save your current version elsewhere, such as in a Google doc. You don’t want to make changes and not be able to access your previous version, should you decide you preferred the old one more.