Usacollegechat Podcast

As I said last week, I am still mired in the swamp of college application essays, which I am reviewing and editing for 50-plus kids. As you might recall, my comments last week and this week are based on the essays of kids who attend top-ranked public high schools. Let me just say that all of the kids are smart and that all of them take honors and Advanced Placement courses. Last week, we talked about the content of their application essays, and this week we are going to talk about the mechanics of those essays--that is, the grammar, the punctuation, the word choice, etc. Having great content is not enough--not for selective colleges anyway. Those essays should also be well written, following standard grammatical, punctuation, and other mechanics rules. As I said to a class of students at an elite high school a week ago, “You write like third graders.” What I meant was that they were making mechanics mistakes that they should have learned to correct in third grade. Well, I might have exaggerated a bit for effe