UC Applications: Tough Time for the Deadline-Challenged

For the academically inclined, this was the day. The April 15 for high school seniors. The Deadline with a capital D.

Nov. 30 was the day freshman applications were due to be postmarked for admission to University of California campuses. No talking your way out of this one. If the dog ate your application, you’d better mail in the dog.

More than 55,000 prospective freshmen are expected to apply to the UC system this year, with the usual flood arriving at the last minute.

Thursday also was supposed to be the day applications were due for the California State University system, but as stock market investors have discovered, high tech isn’t all it was cracked up to be. The online system for applications became so bogged down with traffic this week, the deadline was extended to Tuesday.

Now applicants have five more days to procrastinate, a skill that will come in handy the next four years when it’s time to study for tests and to write papers.

More than half the expected 200,000 applications to the Cal State system will be filed through the Internet. “We list it in our literature as the preferred method of application,” said Allison Jones, the assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs.

By the end of Thursday, the state universities expected to receive 81,000 applications online. On Nov. 29 alone, 13,740 students completed applications online compared to 4,774 on the same date last year.

That probably means more students are turning to the Internet to file their applications, although a more ominous implication is that more of them are waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting.

The waiting game wasn’t limited to the Cal State system. Because computers can track these things, University of California officials said about 3,000 prospective students were just beginning to fill out their online applications Tuesday, just two days before the deadline.

A third of the online applications to UC last year were filed on the last day and two-thirds came in during the last four or five days, said Terry Lightfoot, a UC spokesman. Total online applications are up nearly 50%. UC had no figures on how many applications it has received so far.

So many high school seniors will turn in their applications at the last minute that you’d think procrastination was the most popular subject.

Asked why she had waited until the last day to turn in her application, Michele Lee, 18, of Sunny Hills High in Fullerton answered, “I guess all the other school stuff I had to do, and the essay part.”

Ah yes, the Dreaded Personal Essay. Tell us about yourself.

“For the last 12 years they’ve been asked to write analytically and to write in the third person,” said Mary Jo Wilson, a counselor at Sunny Hills High. “They’re asked to do a little more introspective thinking, and they haven’t been asked to do that very often.

Some seniors stayed home Thursday as the application deadline approached. “It’s amazing how they suddenly got ill,” said Cynthia Martini, head counselor at Sunny Hills.