Slashdot Mirror
Problems With Truncation On the Common Application
jaroslav writes "A combination of rigid caps on space and poor documentation of the space limits is adding stress on students applying for college using the Common Application, the New York Times reports. The story explains that the application lists word limits for questions, but actually enforces space limits. As a result, an answer with wide characters, such as 'w' or 'm,' may run over space even without reaching the stated word limit. It is not explained why an electronic submission must have such strictly enforced limits."
My guess would be they use a non-fixed width font, and therefore they limit based on whether it would print (or display) on one page. Which i can actually agree with, however the solution is to use a fixed width font, and specify a page/character limit.
However if it's not for this reason, i agree it seems rather arbitrary(and lazy programming) to have the electronics differ from the stated rules.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
they have something closer to 1,000 characters
So reading TFA this bit in the summary As a result, an answer with wide characters, such as 'w' or 'm,' may run over space even without reaching the stated word limit. seems wrong. The fields on screen are sized for lots of w and m characters but you only get about a thousand characters regardless of the width.
It would obviously be better if the form or whatever it is told you how far you had to go. Something like you have used 125/1024 characters.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Most college admissions offices print out the electronic application, and then go by that. It's incredibly ridiculous, the limits they enforce.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
You print out your application, check to see if it truncates, and fix it if it does. They could say - "the essay must fit in an x by y printed space"; but then that would be confusing as well. I wouldn't be surprised if re-reading and editing actually improves the essay.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Lots of forums have spaces that are to big spaces and ones that are to small.
Other ones just go on and on.
http://www.goodexperience.com/tib/archives/2006/10/auto_zone_job_a.html
They want an e-mail address? That's so 1990's.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
My favorite bit is the fellow quoted in the article who laments that he doesn't think there's a solution.
Not to be too arrogant, but anyone who knows basic geometry and how to stick two lines of code together should be able to at least imagine that there exists a solution. Is there really such a wide gap in the Two Cultures that not only does the other side not know how to fix a software problem, they can't even fathom that a fix is possible?
This reminds me of the Cargo Cult mentality mentioned in an article quoted a few days ago, here, where the view of the cult is that technology is an immutable force of nature, not a tool mastered by man, and the idea that man can wield it is so foreign as to be unthinkable.
You'd think that university administrators in the US and their ilk would be advanced beyond that. I feel embarrassed for the poor dumb bastard.
Am I the only one who is really bothered by the scope of information requested on the "Common Application?"
Much more than half of the information requested is either woefully subjective, completely irrelevant, or none of the school's damn business.
Use fixed-width fonts instead. No more pesky wide characters.
It is not explained why an electronic submission must have such strictly enforced limits.
It is because the form is actually just an online interface to a paper form. The warning tells you to look at the preview of the printed application to check for problems.
Please disregard any grammatical errors in the above message. I normally perfectly English just well!
The needs access form everyone uses for financial aid has horrible documentation, a little better than the kind you see as halfway decent in a manual on a cheap chinese import written by someone who doesn't know English. Good enough to put the fan together, mostly... but nowhere near as well-written as it has to be to know what number goes in the box.
There is little incentive to cater to user needs. The adverstising has been done. Making the actual application process easier or better, for some reason, doesn't occur to them.
I actually saw a school application online that asked you to enter your SSN without a secure connection.
Worse, the schools that one doesn't attend keep records from your application. They have no need of your SSN, but keep it on file anyway, along with your other materials, for years.
Asked why the problem had not been fixed, Mr. Killion said, “Believe me, if there’s a way to do it, we’d do it".
When I was fooling around with QBasic at the age of 10 I knew how to solve this problem. How the fuck did the spokesman of the organization that created this form, trusted by 400 colleges and universities, get to his job and still be so ignorant? Almost everyone here on slashdot could code up a fix. All they have to do is relax the character limits in a few places and respace the destination form that the system generates. Also, make the text input box accept carriage returns as characters.
But this should be illustrative of the collective institutional arrogance of these people : they let this problem persist for 10 years. And, instead of fixing it, they added some legalese disclaimers that put the burden of deciphering their website onto the shoulders of the average high school student.
From my time in higher education, I saw this kind of arrogance in many places. Usually from school administrators : the actual professors were usually much better. Part of the reason is, like nearly every other fucked up activity in the American economy, big name colleges effectively have a monopoly. They don't really produce better graduates than lesser known places, but because a given employer or grad school admissions officer can only remember so many names in his or her head, their graduates have a huge advantage for no other reason than the name of the school.
Furthermore, these places have enormous funds of money, all of it completely tax-free, and can charge any arbitrary amount of money they want, since the government will pay it via student "loan" programs.
This problem is like a progressive disease, or a cancer, that eats away at America. It's joined by tumors from the medical system (another example of a de facto monopoly), the legal/court system (ditto), and others. More and more of the wealth of America gets funneled into giant legal monopolies that squander it.
give one plenty of practice in keeping the character count down.
Table-ized A.I.
Chill out. You dont have to rage on some random comment fust because you lack mod point. Also, get a life, it christmas eve.
College isn't the ability to do something in a given field well. That is part of it, sure. But not the biggest part. What college teaches you is how to perform a long and difficult and often times utterly pointless task and be stubborn enough to see it through to the end. That's why lots of jobs have "college degree" as a requirement but they don't care which one you have. What they are looking for is someone who would move an entire bag of rice into a bucket and use chopsticks to do it and not complain. College will teach you this. This entry form is an example.
That's why the poster is confused about the bizarre space width requirement. It's a hurdle. That is its function. It doesn't have to make sense. It would be unrealistic if it did. PLENTY of things along the way in your education will not make any sense at all. It is important that you learn this. The task, whatever it is, must be done. And it must be done, and done in the way asked - regardless of how bizarre it seems. Or even if you have a better idea that would be faster/better/more efficient. No. Do it this way, in the way asked and the time allocated, and get it done.
It is the perfect training ground for life in the job market into which you will be dropped into here in a few years.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2y_LEbdEVE
That nobody is getting FB yet is proof enough that it will not be done; it's even less useful than asking for your blog since that URL is short and unambiguous. Let me explain the FB "address" problem: Facebook and some others repackage "you" so you're no longer some short ID, you're no longer just your e-mail address. Often, even if you are activating a FB-to-FB "friend request," to the person planning to find you, an e-mail address is needed to find an exact match. If your contact is unknown or lurking, your full name is needed. If they aren't even on facebook, then to truly "share" your exact profile long alphanumeric URL unfit for memorization / business cards is sent. That's something even smart students student cannot achive because the college's FB account is lurking in the shadows. Most people outside show-biz never activate their custom facebook.com/shortHandle link
We know from FB and web search engines that most names are ambiguously shared with many candidates, or 100% absent from the internet. Unlike a business card or an e-mail address, knowledge of your location, age and so on are tricky if you've made some info private and someone is trying to decide which John Smith they went to school with out of 300+ truncated results. Some particularly annoying searches show 3 or 4 profiles with a missing photo and zero public data, and you end up wondering if your target is one of a) those b) one they missed among the other 300 c) not on FB after all.
Doctor's medical records forms ask for a name, address, phone, and recently, e-mail. Come emergency time or your next pre-appointment reminder --your phone is still the only thing they use. They would never replace all that for a FB account. In the event that they intend to *spy* over the prospective person, they will fear that asking for a profile blunthly will alert the person to clean up their profile, anyway.
This BEGS to be an online form. As a matter of fact, I initially assumed (from the summary) that it was an online form, and the issue was the form created an FDF file for a PDF document that used proportionally spaced fonts - but then I saw the link to the PDF.
Our university does its grad applications online (maybe undergrad too, but I haven't worked with those). I put together an web-based system that ties into the university database - all the document handling and review activities are managed online. We used to shuffle around crates of paper (quite literally) - that's all gone, and the faculty and staff love it.
Why on earth is this "common application" not electronic, in the real sense of the word rather than this almost-as-bad-as-paper PDF abomination?
#DeleteChrome
You mean that with all the available methods, universities across the nation can't understand the notion of properly programming and documenting a simple electronic application. It's feels as though we are going back in time to a point in time where the "look" of a page better determines weather a student can get into a college or not. The reason for a "w" or a "m" causing said problems has nothing to do with available data space but rather screen space. what's more is why do they have a need for a PDF file in a day and age where it's is easier and often more secure to use a html form. I remember some old forms that couldn't fit some names correctly, imagine a student who is entered who's name is entered into a database incorrectly because some genius professor decided that the look of the application was more important than correct information. heck with today's technology you can actually enforce a word count rather than a character or space requirement, and you'd think a university would think to enable such technology.
For now, those of you who are effected by this act of stupidity, all i can say is use more "i"'s and "l"'s.
that is what golf course meetings get you.
[...] why should some holiday that celebrates a myth induce me to be kind to illiterates?
It is not suppose too, but you should have better thing to do. Merry christmas faggot!
To save paper and ink/toner. Yes, they are going to print them all!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
but why don't they look at cheaper ways that people to perform a long and difficult and often times utterly pointless tasks then just say college degree needed and then have look past all the tech , community , and online schools? Is people who did work and not go to class for jobs that don't need degrees can get a job there? What about people who are in the army and want to work after the army and not go to 4 years of classes to do (some time some of same stuff they did in army).
Presumably you intended to write "supposed", and "better things". Perhaps you should learn to write English before fondling your keyboard. Faggot, you say? Is that supposed to be an insult, coming from a semi-literate? And precisely who are you to decide that I should have better things to do than laugh at illiterates?
Suddenly I am very glad that my habit when filling out PDFs is to download them, open them in Illustrator, make a new layer, and start putting down text. Sometimes I'll even move lines around on the form a little if needs be.
Sadly, most people don't have this capability.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Bill Gates said 640 words on the Microsoft application ought to be enough for anyone.
Table-ized A.I.
Tech, community and online schools don't have as many hurdles. They are convenient and quick. That is part of their charm. It's in their sales pitch. But it defeats the purpose. They are looking for stubborn thick skull bastards who walk uphill both ways in the snow.
Sitting in a coffee shop with your laptop getting a degree online doesn't show what they are looking for. Sorry, but that's how it is.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
My daughter has dual (US/Norwegian) citizenship, she is currently applying to both US and Norwegian colleges.
She's a _very_ avid reader (~200 books/year, most of them from the main branch of the Oslo public library), so when Berkeley asks for the books she has read during the last year (3/6 months?) there's no way she can fit the list into the given number of words, right?
By trial and error she discovered that using a colon (:) as the separator between author and title would not count as a word separator, unlike a space, a comma, or a dash.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Not me. The mods are the one deciding.
Well, I won't be wasting my time trying to comment on slashdot anymore. My Anonymous Coward post are never showing up. I am not one to waste my time doing something for nothing.
The explanation is the same as the reason why so may e-commerce web forms state "no spaces or dashes" for credit card entry fields.
Programmer incompetence
A slashdot signature I set occasionally; Twitter messages I send all the time. :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It's wordy, unclear, and redundant, but the only actual mistake there is using "to" instead of "too".
He almost certainly meant "forms" as well, given the context, but one cannot say for certain.
Are you an asshole, or do you just hate life?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
This is simply a preview of the real world. As someone who has just gone through the agonizing process of filling in multiple, often horrifically-designed online job applications, I wonder how perfecting a 'Common Application' for colleges serves to prepare students for the future job market.
Why can't it be better given the caliber of the institutions involved?
Ever wonder why some really successful people didn't stick with those institutions and went it alone.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
So I guess I'm not at work now, I'm in College. Thanks, I'll list it as such on my next resume.
At this point, people are just winding you up, poking you for an expected reaction. And your giving it to them. (considers where in this post to put a deliberate mistake)