

Common Application Users Find a Glitch - asnyder
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/education/23college.html

======
Groxx
> _“A capital W takes up 10 times the space of a period,” he said. “If a
> student writes 163 characters that include lots of Ws and m’s and g’s and
> capital letters, their 163 characters are going to take many more inches of
> space than someone who uses lots of I’s and commas and periods and spaces.”_

> _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. Maybe there’s a way out there we don’t
> know about.”_

... TeX has been doing this for _years_. Clearly, their preview does it for
them, as it cuts things off where it should. _They have a solution staring
them in the face_. What the hell?

------
waterlesscloud
"Mr. Killion said the issue of “truncation,” as it is known within the Common
Application offices, is not new, and had been a reality of the process for
more than a decade..."

More than a decade? Everyone in that office needs to quit and never work
anywhere again.

~~~
patio11
This is the reality in government, academia, and most businesses in which
software does not make money.

Here's the exact discussion which you'd have if they called up A Consulting
Firm Which Did Lots of Academic Work:

"By the way, our common application program has a truncation issue."

"Ah, yes, I see that."

"What would it cost to get it fixed?"

"Ten thousand dollars." +

"Ten thousand dollars for something which doesn't get graded by US News and
World Report or make us look more prestigious than Yale!?! Screw it, we'll put
a note in the handbook."

\+ I am open to commentary that this is too high, but disagree. Getting stuff
to fit algorithmically is pretty tricky: BCC doesn't get it right 100% of the
time (my heuristics are up to 99.X% and doing it "properly" would take weeks),
and the amount of work it took me to get from 90 to 99.X% would be in the
neighborhood of $10k if charged out at intermediate engineer consulting
rates).

~~~
waterlesscloud
I understand what you're saying, and I don't disagree with your cost estimate
at all. I don't think you'd get it perfect in a day, like others have
indicated (though I do think you could make it massively better in a few
hours).

But...

This is their product. Their only product. It's what they sell, it's what
generates their income. It's not just a cost center, it's the revenue center.
And it doesn't serve the customers' needs in a fundamental way. And hasn't in
over 10 years.

That to me speaks of inexplicable laziness and irresponsibility.

~~~
macrael
Ahh, but they have no competitors. There is very little reason for them to
improve. It's genius! Their entire business model is built on the fact that
they don't have competitors. They just have to be good enough for the big
schools to sign on, and now that they have that, they have _no_ reason to
improve. They are no doubt raking in the cash, but aren't making things
better.

------
vietor
That is seriously embarrassing, but the attitude of "OMG there is no way to
fix it!" makes me appreciate the rates that qualified consultants charge.

It is in no way an impossible problem to limit it by physical size if it's
being printed in a standard format, but apparently it seems that way to some.

~~~
tibbon
Agreed, that isn't the type of thing I'd tell the NYT. Everyone's
company/startup has technical issues, but this really could be fixed by a post
on StackOverflow if they needed free advice.

~~~
vietor
Exactly, it's a relatively minor technical issue that could be fixed fairly
trivially. Yet rather than doing that it's worked around: "is not new, and had
been a reality of the process for more than a decade." From my experience this
is a fairly common approach in non-technical institutions. Issues are worked
around and people are inconvenienced to a cost far in excess of what it would
cost to fix the problem. (The opposite of what occasionally happens in tech
startups...)

While it's just everyday paperwork for them, it's a life changing event for
most applicants and the level of apathy with which they address it is
maddening.

------
colinsidoti
Jeesh, the kid goes through so much trouble generating press and says this:

"It's kind of ridiculous," he said. "I take computer science. I have a vague
idea of how this may or may not work. I think it would be just such an easy
thing for an error message, at least, to pop up."

So much for taking advantage of the opportunity.

Common App is an awful piece of software and there are many places for
improvement. There is definitely room for a startup in this space, and the
article proves that common app isn't going to put up a fight.

------
pak
I think it's a overflow issue. The print preview flows the text in some box on
a page, and if you have lots of wide characters it gets cut off because they
didn't anticipate the max y-height 150 words can consume.

The Times was a bit imprecise in how they used the kid's words to explain the
bug (about par for their technical reporting, unfortunately). The way they
write it, it sounds a lot like <textarea maxlength=1000></textarea>, but if
you think more about the explanation of the wide characters and the "print
preview" it can't be that.

Overflow issues are actually not trivial to fix, as opposed to the claims some
people are making here about "just count the words". Without allowing an
excessive amount of space or allowing for more flexibility in the way it lays
it out (flowing across multiple pages, etc.), it can be hard to estimate how
much space to give for something as vague as a 150-word limit. If the Common
App instead specified a 1000-character limit, the programmer/designer could
take the widest character like "W" and determine the max y-height for 1000
W's.

~~~
chc
What you're actually saying here is: Overflow issues are not trivial to fix if
the only approach you try is guessing how much space the user is likely to
want and hoping you're right.

That's because guesstimating a length is not really fixing the issue. The
flexible layout algorithm you describe in your "Without…" clause is the right
thing to do, and it's been a solved problem for decades now.

Anyway, even if they don't want to fix the root problem, it would still be
trivial to do better than they are doing now. Instead of passing the buck with
their "I went over the print preview with a fine-tooth comb" checkbox, it
would be pretty close to trivial to algorithmically check whether you're
oversetting the type and throw an error along the lines of, "Hey, we didn't
allow enough room in the form and aren't competent to make it work right.
You'll need to fix this."

------
frisco

      char_lengths_in_px = {"a": 9, "b": 7, "c": 8, ... }
      px_per_line = 768
      current_length = reduce(lambda x,y: y+char_lengths_in_px[x], my_text, 0)
      space_left = (px_per_line*num_lines)-current_length
    

FTFY

~~~
pak
I wish it were this simple, but you forgot about word-wrapping. Also, what to
do in the event that space_left is negative, but the user hasn't reached 150
words.

(Also, it's layout for print, so better to think in terms of pts or picas.)

~~~
frisco
This will give you an upper-bound, which is the worst case. You're right that
you'll end up not giving the students as much as they "should" have, but its
still infinitely better than just truncating it without warning.

~~~
pak
You mean lower-bound. current_length should be greater than what you calculate
given any my_text with >1 char words. So you will wind up giving the students
more than you can fit, not less than they should have. That's just as bad as
truncating without warning.

------
asnyder
Situations like this make me sad. 1000 characters is not the same as 150
words. It's very easy to strip out punctuation and then count the number of
words in a string. Really really careless.

I love the quote:

 _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. Maybe there’s a way out there we don’t
know about.”_

~~~
fendrak
This reminds me how most people seem to see programming as some sort of black
magic that only happens when the stars align just-so. If only they were aware
of how different things actually are...

Python solution: def under_the_limit(response): return len(response.split())
<= 150

~~~
joeld42
This is wrong. They're not checking for 150 words.

They need to check that, once typeset on the printable form, the text fits in
a box of a certain size.

Still, whatever they are using to typeset the form should be able to easily
give them that info. Even if, god forbid, they are doing it with HTML they can
get that info.

Much simpler would be to design the form with a monospaced font for the essay.
This is a big reason why manuscripts are still submitted in Courier even
though few people use typewriters anymore.

~~~
ghshephard
YES - I was wondering why nobody had brought up the painfully straight forward
solution of "Fixed Width Font" - Then your bounding area is a simple function
of the number of characters you typed in, and an error message can pop up if
the student exceed it.

~~~
chc
It's not quite that simple even with a monospace font unless you wrap words
unnaturally. For example, the word "heterochromatic" repeated over and over
with a space between fills up the HN comment box in 288 characters, but "I DO"
makes it to 359.

------
desigooner
Higher Education Software sucks mightily for the most part. It's way too rigid
and often, the cost of customization is prohibitive for offices working on a
certain budget. Also, for some reason, common sense in decision making is not
a factor many a times as far as Higher Ed IT goes.

I work in higher ed and often see quotes for doing very simple things to be in
hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars. The integration of software from
different vendors is a nightmare as no one really provides any sort of an API
and such customizations usually end up being ugly hacks since the vendors
would charge exorbitantly for doing the same. Also, there's rarely a way to
successfully propose a change due to the investment in legacy software and
sunken costs. Not to mention the crappy SLAs that the vendors provide.

As far as issues like wordcount, it could be something as trivial as changing
the parameters on the backend for the system to accept X+Y characters for
validation instead of X but still advertise the X character limit on the front
end.

------
w1ntermute
Is there any good reason to be using inches instead of characters to calculate
the length of an essay submitted digitally?

~~~
rjvir
Yes - the essays have to be printed, on a paper measured by inches, not
characters.

------
davidradcliffe
This situation is pretty unbelievable. Almost any halfway decent web developer
could build a fix for this in a day.

------
drivebyacct2
The whole problem is caused by what I consider to be a larger problem: They're
trying to print the damn things.

In terms of collaborating with others to form an opinion on an applicant, an
online no-print system sounds better, more flexible and less prone to these
types of problems.

~~~
slapshot
Sitting around a conference table with physical files is a far traditional way
to collaborate than doing it all electronically. At most schools, the
admissions office staff all works in the same office, and could easily discuss
face-to-face. Face-to-face communication is still richer than electronic,
based on the ability to judge tone, facial expression, etc.

Now, one day maybe iPads could replace physical files when discussing around a
conference table, but until then physical files are easier to read (especially
in bulk) and easier to wave around.

~~~
rmc
_Sitting around a conference table with physical files is a far traditional
way to collaborate than doing it all electronically_

OK, fair enough. So why don't they just print the whole thing? Some
submissions will be on 2 pages? Sounds better than truncating it.

