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"You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 4:12 pm
by arez
I keep getting this error "You have entered an invalid character or characters" in response to my answer to the question
"List your extracurricular, community, or other activities in the order of their importance to you. Give a brief description of your involvement, including any special responsibilities or leadership positions held."

Any ideas on what this invalid characters could be? Or does mean I am over the character limit?
Thanks for your help!

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 4:18 pm
by birdlaw117
arez wrote:I keep getting this error "You have entered an invalid character or characters" in response to my answer to the question
"List your extracurricular, community, or other activities in the order of their importance to you. Give a brief description of your involvement, including any special responsibilities or leadership positions held."

Any ideas on what this invalid characters could be? Or does mean I am over the character limit?
Thanks for your help!
I think I remember having an issue with semicolons. Maybe if you have semicolons you can try and get rid of those?

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 4:33 pm
by Curious1
arez wrote:I keep getting this error "You have entered an invalid character or characters" in response to my answer to the question
"List your extracurricular, community, or other activities in the order of their importance to you. Give a brief description of your involvement, including any special responsibilities or leadership positions held."

Any ideas on what this invalid characters could be? Or does mean I am over the character limit?
Thanks for your help!
Had the same problem--I think the problem is that you're copying and pasting from your resume directly. Just retype everything and it will be fine.

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 4:50 pm
by No13baby
I had the exact same problem with this last night. For some reason apostrophes aren't on the "accepted character" list - after I took mine out it submitted fine, but it seemed like such a basic character that it took me a while to figure out what it was.

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 5:07 pm
by arez
Thanks I think it was the apostrophes...so random!

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 3:27 pm
by oregon000
anyone else figure out how to deal with this problem?

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:09 pm
by Avrenim
In my case, it was because I had copy-pasted text from my resume (a Word document). When I wrote it from scratch, copying my resume text character for character, it was fine.

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 7:02 pm
by oregon000
I am tempted to not apply to law school because of this shit

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 7:09 pm
by oregon000
I entered in a bunch of characters and from what I can tell:

: ; - 'are all okay.

It appears that its " " which the robot does not understand


hope this helps

Re: "You have entered an invalid character or characters"

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 2:42 pm
by Troyusrex
The problem is that Microsoft Word changes apostrophes to "Smart quotes" which the system seems not to be able to handle. You can cut and paste it into Notepad first and then cut-and-paste from there into the app or you can cut and paste into the app and the remove anything that looks like an apostrophe and replace it by hitting the apostrophe key.