<p>SO SO TRUE! I’m still a junior but when i apply next year to my dream schools, i’ll be sure to be myself.</p>
<p>As much as I hate the WSJ for their outrageous political stances, they were spot on with this!!</p>
<p>Thanks for the link.</p>
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<p>LOL! I agree about the semicolons but not about the ‘heretofore’. I think that is a kid trying to sound ‘all grown up’. I don’t know too many adults who would use that word in an essay.</p>
<p>Note to self: Don’t insert too many semicolons when I write (or rewrite) D’s essays. (J.K).</p>
<p>Too many semicolons=>parents wrote it? I had a bunch of semicolons, but that’s just my writing style. No one (peers, parents, teachers) saw, let alone rewrote, my essay!</p>
<p>I hope applicants will stop writing about their trips to underdeveloped countries. As the article points out, it is a topic that is way overused. One of my kid’s EA essays for Chicago had to do with going to White Castle! It was really cleverly written. You have to show some personality in these applications or you simply blend in with the over-achieving crowd!</p>
<p>The comment in the article about semicolons also gave me pause. Many of these kids coming out of honors English and AP Language classes (or just regular English for that matter) are probably better with punctuation rules than their parents who may have not had such instruction for 30 years…I know my son is!</p>
<p>SEMICOLONS? I happen to like semicolons…unlike Kurt Vonnegut.</p>
<p>How would I assure admin officers that my parents had no say in my essays? They don’t even know what a semicolon is. :/</p>
<p>I think semicolons make a passage clumsy. They probably get inserted at the time of editing to make the essay shorter. Nothing like a semicolon to reduce the word count.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don’t agree with the semicolon statement. I personally know several people who use more semicolons than periods in their writing…</p>
<p>i think i may be time to drop the semicolon discussion.</p>
<p>No it isn’t, I love semicolons.</p>
<p>The question is whether having a semicolon is better than no colon at all. If you have no colon does one require a colostomy? Or is a semicolon sufficient? </p>
<p>But seriously, FWIW, when editing others’ writing I subscribe to the philosophy that anywhere you see a semicolon, insert a period instead. By proper use, both sides of semicolon have to be able to stand as independent sentences. So they should.</p>
<p>Well, keep in mind that the different schools get applicants with different writing calibers - I guarantee that many college applicants have really good vocabularies and drop 1000$ words in a way that sounds fine and natural. But the problem occurs when a 10$ word could have been used and made the whole thing easier on both the reader and writer, or when an obviously 10$ writer is interjecting 1000$ words out of place - a high level of writing is fine, but it needs to be consistently so, and not obnoxiously so. </p>
<p>WSJ is overgeneralizing everything and giving good basic tips, but as this topic said, this is about what NOT to do. My idea of what not to do is ‘don’t stop at the basics of what to do and not to do’ because 90% of the applicant pool of top places are all going to be doing the same right basic things.</p>
<p>I think the article was well done. When I did my app I picked a topic that is overly used: visiting an underdeveloped country. The only thing was that my grandparents live in India, so I could really relate to my topic. I had so much fun writing my college essays, because they were all about me and no one else. I don’t know why everyone nowadays simply assumes that a perfect application will guarantee admission into elite universities. Nobody is perfect, universities want a diverse student body, not a bunch of perfect robots.</p>
<p>To balance the playing field, I think admission folks need to go back to schools to. If some uber smart, engaging kid did the app himself flawlessly they ding him for being too professional ? First they try to separate the chaff from the whey, now they are saying the cream of the crop is staged. So your goal is medicine and you volunteer your summer to help the sick in some field hospital in Kenya, that’s considered staged, passionless ?</p>
<p>Probably the usage of words should be reflective of the CR SAT score. More leniency for use of grandiloquent words for those scoring >750.</p>
<p>Well if you teacher recs talk about how you struggle in english but work hard, and you have a mediocre SAT writing/CR score, but amazing essays I think the admissions officers will catch on.</p>
<p>LOL - D just did a grammar check on one of her short responses, and it told her to replace one of her commas with a semi-colon, gadzooks she can’t get into that top LAC now!!!</p>
<p>Seriously, I kind of disagree with the essay/test comparison. You could be the type that would not do well in a 20 minute SAT/ACT time trial essay, but still be able to craft an excellent essay over time with thought and editing, on a subject that you are passionate about…if the student does not do very well expressing himself in an essay, wouldn’t the recommendations give the admissions rep at least some insight as to what he is really like?</p>
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<p>That should read “No it isn’t; I love semicolons.” ;)</p>