seniors! college application season is well on its way, and the biggest stressor year after year is the dreaded personal essay. this written task requires you, the prospective student, to put yourself on paper. you may think the admissions staff judges you on your whole application; do not be fooled. a faculty member from the University of Pennsylvania explained the admissions process, stating, “we read each essay 15 times, five times forward and ten times backwards, then we blindfold ourselves and draw a picture of what we think the applicant looks like.” needless to say, the tone and structure of your personal essay matters. the princeton review, however, presents a 100% foolproof way to increase the quality of your application: students should write with auto caps off. “in 2022, the biggest mistake you can make is presenting yourself as an obnoxious snob who cares about things like proper grammar or capitalizing ‘i,’” claims princeton review ceo joshua hyoung-jun park. other members of the princeton review claimed that writing with auto caps makes the student look like they have a ‘type A’ personality, and today’s ivys are looking for a chill selection of applicants. 

to verify this groundbreaking advice, the radish interviewed admissions faculty at each ivy league school. “the common misconception is that students need to portray themselves as some one-in-a-million star. in reality, we are all human. we all type with auto caps off,” stated one individual at Brown. a faculty member at Harvard commented, “let’s be honest, capitalized names gives off pretentious energy.” we then stopped a group of Harvard students on their way to class, and asked them for personal essay-writing tips. one responded, “i typed my personal essay in a text to my friend,” and his peer chimed in, “mine was written in an instagram story. i made it in create mode.” this group advised against typing on snapchat, citing the short word limits. 

in addition to turning auto caps off, the princeton review promoted five more tips to appear down to earth on college essays:

1. do away with proper punctuation better yet dont use punctuation at all
2. the same goes for apostrophes
3. use acronyms where suitable lmao
4. though counterintuitive use all caps when youre making an important point
5. sometimes “afdfkhsfgdjskgf” says more than words

the personal essay is a make or break factor in the admissions process. do not make yourself out to be someone youre not, type in lowercase.