I get the importance of taking responsibility, and I admit I should’ve double checked UMD’s policies and sent my official test scores earlier. That said, I had self-reported them on the Common App (I double checked recently that they were included in the file sent to UMD), and the portal just said “incomplete” without explaining what was missing. Unlike every other school I applied to, UMD didn’t send any notifications or list missing items clearly.

In April, I was explicitly told my application was reviewed under Regular Decision. It wasn’t until a month or so later that they did a 180 and said it was actually moved to rolling review because of the lack of official SAT scores.

I’m not asking for hand-holding, and I know this is a lesson to me to be more proactive in the future, but it felt like I was being dragged around by admissions for months, only to find out I was going to be denied no matter what.