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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.
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.
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!
I actually saw a school application online that asked you to enter your SSN without a secure connection.
I've seen any number of people point out that US law forbids the use of the SSN for any purpose not related to the Social Security system. Unless the application is for a job at the school, requiring the SSN is almost certainly illegal.
Of course, the school's answer is the standard one: You don't have to supply your SSN, but we also don't have to accept your application. Lots of luck trying to get us to change this; by the time you've spent a few million dollars to appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court (where you'll probably win), you'll probably be retired and using your SSN to collect your Social Security checks.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Except, U.S. law says no such thing. There's no prohibition of businesses requesting your SSN, and they can legally refuse to do business with you if you don't provide it. CA has a law prohibiting publicly posting SSNs or using them as identifiers, but other than that...
geek. lawyer.
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.
You won't go to jail for not giving them your SSN.
Yeah, you're right. But you probably won't go to college there, either.
That's the problem with a lot of setups like this. Yes, you have a right to privacy. But they also have a right to not let you on their private property if you don't hand over the information they want.
We see this pointed out on /. all the time. The most common is the auto example: You don't have to hand over information like SSN to get a driver's license. But they also don't have to give you a driver's license. In the state I live in (which one isn't relevant here since lots have done this) the US government cracked down a few years back and ordered them to stop using SSNs as part of the driver's license number. Before this, mere citizens couldn't refuse to tell them the SSN, because this would mean that you couldn't legally drive in the state (or in any other, actually).
Ultimately, this sort of "forced" giving up of ID numbers is the reason we're having more and more problems with identity theft. Nearly anything you want to do to live normally in society requires that you give your id number to lots of organizations, who keep it in insecure computer systems. We're reaching the point that all the numbers needed for me to pretend I'm you are available for a reasonable price from lots of corporations, because you've "voluntarily" given them your numbers (and they've shared them with each other).
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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
that is what golf course meetings get you.
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).
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"
Right. All that Federal law does is ban the use of the social security card as ID.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Back when I was applying for university, the form in Ontario (Canada) asked for a SIN (social insurance number, our equivalent to the SSN) which I declined to provide. It seemingly made no difference to my application, it just meant that when it came to tax form season, I realized why they ask for it.
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
>>The SSN isn't required. You won't go to jail for not giving them your SSN.
At my college (UCSD) SSN is not only required, but it is legal for them to demand your SSN on the application.
I wanted to do the same backseat lawyering as you, until I actually looked it up and saw they had a grandfather exemption.
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.
All that Federal law does is ban the use of the social security card as ID.
And what do you think they do with your SSN? Right; they use it as one of their "secrets" to IDentify you.
Well, ok; some of them also want it as part of the ID information about you that they sell to other companies. But their primary excuse for wanting it is always so they can ask for the number (e.g. on the phone) to help verify that a caller is you.
It's rather ineffective as an ID number, of course, since anyone with access to the customer records of any company or school you've given it to could use the number to impersonate you. But still, asking you for it to verify who you claim to be is called "identification", and they're using your SSN as an ID number, which is a violation of federal law unless they're dealing with Social Security information.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
So do Canadians make bad word-play jokes about "living in SIN" for when you're getting SI money? ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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)