By Toni Cicone
See the issue: October 2008

“When your college or scholarship application has mistakes, it looks like you didn’t take the time and that you don’t care,” says Laura Braswell, a senior editor at the Princeton Review. Here, Braswell identifies some common mistakes and suggests how to avoid them.

“Grammatical mistakes, such as misplaced commas or apostrophes, and simple misspelled words, should easily be caught,” Braswell asserts. Among the most common mistakes, she says, are using the wrong plural or possessive form, and mixing up homonyms like “it’s” and “its” and “you’re” and “your.”

Other grammatical danger zones include misplaced modifiers and pronouns, parallel construction and passive voice. “With so many spelling and grammar tools available on computers, as well as online, there’s really no reason anything should be misspelled or grammatically incorrect,” Braswell says.

Since technology can’t always be trusted, though, Braswell offers these three tips:

1. Fill out the application, then wait a few days to re-read it.

2. Read your application out loud.

3. Have someone else, like a parent, teacher or friend, read it.

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