Daniel Stern of the NYT wrote a funny expose on typos in the college application forms. Here is an excerpt:Take, for example, Question 6 on the University of Pennsylvania supplement accessed through the Common Application Web site: “As the Admissions staff reads your folder, it is always gratifying for us to be able to match an application with tthe face of someone who we may have met during the year. To this end, please attach a recent photograph.”Read the entire article here.One of my students chose to answer Penn’s essay question about risk-taking by copyediting the text in red font and writing:
Dear Admissions Committee,
…I want you to know that I do not hold it against your fine university that such silly typos found their way into the final application sent out to applicants worldwide. It happens. You’re only human. And so am I. So to balance things off, please simply bump up my Writing score on the SAT a mere 50 points. We’ll call it even.
He did not get in. But Penn has since corrected the “tthe” — though the “who/whom” problem remains.
Hamilton College emphasizes the importance of writing skills, but its Common Application online supplement stumbles in asking for a graded writing sample: “Describe the assigment in the space below and attached a photocopy of the oringinal.” A few lines down: “The Admission Committee's policy is to select the tetsting options that will serve you best...”
