Missing application materials? Dear Ariel tells you not to stress

I’ve been trying to make “Dear Ariel” a regular Friday feature, but today is our Early Notification deadline, which makes it the perfect time for Ariel’s choice of FAQ.

Dear Ariel:  I just submitted my application and when I login to GAMS it says everything is missing.  Help!

First:  Congrats!  You just submitted your application!  Now, take a deep breath, and remain calm.

After you submit your application, you will receive an email with your username and password to login to the Tufts Graduate and Professional Schools Application Management System.  We like to call it GAMS for short.  If you don’t receive this message, check your spam folder.  If you still can’t find the email, do not distress!  Just email us and we will send you a new username and password.

You can login to GAMS to check the status of your application, and also to see if you are missing any application materials.  Because we process your application by hand, after you press submit, all of your materials will initially be marked “missing.”  This won’t change until our hard-working admissions staff members are able to print off your application, place it in a file, give you a nice shiny label, pull any additional items from our filing cabinet, and manually go through your new file, checking off each required item as they go along.  Please allow us 10 days to complete all of these steps before you get worried about any missing items.   We’ll also contact you if anything is missing.

A special note, if your recommenders are submitting their letters electronically, we cannot process your application until all of them have submitted their recommendation letters.  This means that you should give us 10 days from the time your last recommender hits “submit” to process your application.  (Some gentle reminders to your recommenders will help move the process along.)