Application interface

Question

I just finished the Columbia J-Term application. As a former IT person, I have nothing but bad things to say about Columbia's application interface. It is one the most unintuitive and unreliable web applications I have used. More so, now that I have looked at the web interface of Wharton and Princeton, Columbia's contemporary schools.

Some of my main gripes:
- Can't upload a word document. Which in itself is not a problem, but it gets annoying because copying and pasting from word causes all sorts of problems (truncated characters, special characters etc.)
- Highly unreliable : Kept crashing on me. Particularly frustrating when I just finished 
- Unintuitive interface for resumes
- Extremely detailed requirements for resume (including jobs from universities etc.)

grad_mba · Answer

Looks like essay is not the only thing to worry about when it comes to CBS

kryzak · Answer

BTW, what do you guys do with jobs from universities? do you include every random job you held like grader for classes, undergraduate research, etc?

mba2010 · Answer

It would also be nice if, for all the schools using the ApplyYourself application, one application could populate the other. It sucks having to input the same information in over and over...

mNeo · Answer

And it would be terrible if ApplyYourself starts informing schools about the other schools that you are applying to. 

"Hmm, Mr. riverripper, I see that Carnegie Mellon is your top choice. So Kellogg, Chicago, MIT and Tuck are your backups then, eh?"

dabots · Answer

it would be nice if apply yourself let you log into more than 1 app at a time

riverripper · Answer

That would be a tough one to explain...hmm my wife really really wants to live in Pittsburgh instead of Boston or Chicago and I like to make her happy so Pittsburgh here I come. Think they would buy that? 

Then again if you apply to 5 schools 4 are backups to your top choice. I am sure a fair number of applicants to GSB, Kellogg, Tuck, MIT are also applying to Harvard, Wharton, or Stanford so in reality they are backups at times. The top 10 schools are all competing for the same several thousand top applicants. A school like CMU might realize that a person they want is probably going to get accepted to MIT or someplace else so thats when they start offering money in an effort to get you there.

riverripper · Answer

Oh, interesting stat I saw on CMU's website for the class of 09, the class size is over 30% larger than the class of 08. So their yield must have been a lot better this year than in some of the previous years.

kidderek · Answer

Many complained last year as well.

mNeo · Answer

This is assuming that the same number of applicants were admitted this year. Maybe they just increased the number of admitted applicants? Or maybe you had already checked that fact too .. in which case, nevermind !

aviroop · Answer

Have space put them in. No space - remove the useless ones.
I am in the same dilemma. Worked in Chik-filet for one month. Do I add that in to show my excellent culinary skills.

kryzak · Answer

LOL! Ok, there's always the paranoia of the schools expelling you after finding you you didn't list *every* experience you had or you "misrepresented" a fact because you either forgot or got the numbers wrong... 

Maybe I'm just super paranoid...

aviroop · Answer

I even spelled chic- filet wrong.. have no clue what its spelled like.. Gawd I have to do so much useless research to find out my job facts.

Interestingly enough a lot of my college work experience revolves around cafeterias, restaurants, and fast food places.
Being the son of a chef is difficult indeed!!! Its in my genes.

Tried a new way for house salads -

Instead of putting in salad dressing, squeeze lime and pour honey, toss and serve.

Very yummy!!
:wink:

adcxaway · Answer

The truncated letters/special characters are an absolute pain. I spend an hour going through my essays after uploading them to make sure that everything was ok. When the system messes up your essays, you've got to make sure that the last few words are still there. I had a few essays whose words went missing.

I spoke to the ad coms about their resume, as I wanted to check some details - I was told, oh don't worry so much about it. We're not such a stickler when it comes to the online resume.... :cry:

after all the time that went into it... sigh

after all the time that went into it... sigh

bsd_lover · Answer

Oh great... now you tell me

I spent hours trying to get my special characters right (I guess I am very 'expressive'). All the quotes both (') and (") , and the hyphens (-) are auto formatted by word into a different special character. Now these remain special characters even if you copy and paste it into a normal text file. So the only time you find out that there is an issue with these is when you copy and paste these on the Columbia online app. As much as I want to attend Columbia, I am certainly not impressed so far.

aviroop · Answer

Now Now..dont judge a book by its cover

bsd_lover · Answer

LOL Columbia are doing so by judging MY essays ... 

Life is so unfair ...

mNeo · Answer

Guys, just before submitting the essay to the Columbia site, open your word doc or openoffice odt file and save it as a txt file encoded in ASCII/US. This will ensure that the document is saved in a format understandable by the Columbia website. Now copy the text from this "txt" file and paste it in the columbia website. After doing this, you will not have to manually change the " or ' or - type characters.

mNeo · Answer

Okay, this is officially the most terrible website ever. I have not been able to pay for the application using any credit card. I've tried a lot of cards and for all of them the website says, "An error occured". Great !!

aviroop · Answer

ask for a application fee waiver

Application interface

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