“…when you email a family member…” That reminds me that it’s good to write the essay in a comfortable tone. When kids get locked up, they can often relate to the advice to write as if it’s for family or a family friend. Not the idea it has to impress a teacher, who’ll grade it.
And if they’d use some sophisticated words in that context, comfortably, without pretense, then fine.
I have to agree with him although it can sound quite stuffy. I had to raise an eyebrow when my daughter wrote the word “cool” in her common app essay. (Ok, don’t micromanage, it’s her application…YOU’RE NOT SAYING COOL IN YOUR COLLEGE ESSAY!)
@littlerobot
Maybe except the one word my husband likes to type back in a text when he likes something is “cool” because he actually thinks he is cool, when he is NOT cool and he sounds like such a dork. That is a word he needs to leave to kids! 
Penn is trying to re-open campus but instruction will remain remote.
Even lawyers are writing less formally these days. All the Latin and “hereinafters” are blessedly disappearing from briefs. But a preposition at the end of a sentence? What is she thinking of?
I have many 50 year old lawyerly writing pet peeves, but not that one. And I like starting the occasional sentence with a conjunction.
We must have heard the same Yale person discuss the issue. My son has the common sense to ignore me and my writing advice.
@CateCAParent “Even lawyers are writing less formally these days.” Still waiting for my husband to get that memo. He also refuses to write a contraction…ever!
Haha Yale was the one school that rejected him twice so 40+ years later that still makes him bitter.
Maybe this will be the most competitive application year ever. I know you pointed to the Yale Dean expanding class sizes to compensate. Either Harvard’s not doing that, or they just got lots more apps. this year with Test Optional. But the Early rate dropped by half? Congrats to my girl J.D. who got it! Harvard Admits Record Low 7.4% of Early Action Applicants to the Class of 2025 | News | The Harvard Crimson
–MCS
We were on a Zoom town hall with DD’s T20 LAC earlier this week. They announced that the number of ED applications tripled from last year. Not only that, the overall number of applications received by December 15 this year was also 300% more than the number received by December 15 last year. Last year 60% of the class came from ED. They didn’t talk about their acceptance rate this year but it certainly seems like it would be way more difficult to be one of the 450 ED acceptances when there are 3000 applications versus only 941 applications.
Bifurcation in early admissions as a result of test optionality is on full display. “Elite” colleges have almost universally received more early applications, while others have received fewer. Harvard also benefited from Princeton’s decision not to offer early admission this year, which Fitzsimmons failed to mention as one of the reasons for the increase in applications. It’s also interesting to note that he called this year’s early applicant pool “amazingly diverse”, presumably more diverse than in years past.
Fritzsimmons, in that linked article above, mentioned financial aid during the COVID crisis as one of the primary reasons for the increase in applications at Harvard. I went back and looked at what some of the top private colleges did for the needy students. The key factor is how they determine the cost of attendence, which is what financial aid is based on, for students who were learning remotely (most, if not all, of their students were). These colleges are all generous, but their relative generosity during the COVID crisis is mostly a function of their treatment of the cost of room and board for remote students.
All R&B costs are annualized.
Harvard: $10k (remote) / $18.4k (standard on campus)
Princeton: $11.5k (remote) / $17.4k (standard on campus)
MIT: $13k* (remote) / $16k (standard on campus) *includes $5k one-time grant
Caltech: $17.3k (remote) / $17.3k (standard on campus)
Harvard, relatively speaking, is the least generous among this group based on this measure (I can’t find similar information on Stanford or Yale).
Harvard dropped both the acceptance rate and the number of admits this year vs last year. Yale increased the admits but the rate went down because apps were up:
Harvard: 747/10,086 (7.4%) vs 895/6,424 (13.9%)
Yale: 837/7,939 (10.5%) vs 796/5,777 (13.8%)
Assuming roughly 200 athletes plus development cases (figure probably is low), that means the real admit rate was closer to 547/9,886 (5.5%)
I see that Harvard still rejected a tiny portion of the applicants, 924 (9%). I wonder with the deluge of applicants if Harvard admissions decided to just give admissions to the true no brainers vs spending time on the closer cases and leaving more room for an expected increase in strong candidates in the regular round. I also wonder if the schools that received a huge influx in EA/ED apps this year will hire more AO’s for the regular round.
I agree about the conversational tone. These people read hundreds and hundreds of essays and devote just a few minutes to each one. They are not reading every essay with fresh eyes. My son’s first draft of his common app essay while perfectly adequate and grammatically correct and on an engaging topic that is unique to my son would put you to sleep. He worked really hard for weeks and through multiple drafts to make it more engaging to read and give it more of a storytelling feel. Still obviously written by a 17-year-old but much more interesting take on the same subject matter.