Mark Moody

I thought this was a fun idea, and I liked the spirit of the Crimson students who reached out to me, so I participated in this annual essay publication from the Harvard newspaper. This is an essay from an enrolled Harvard student with a few comments from me about why it worked and how it could be even sharper. It’s a great story. Scroll to entry number 7 to find my contribution! https://www.thecrimson.com/sponsored/article/ten-successful-harvard-essays-2026/ #collegeessay...

Harry Bauld has been helping students write the college application essay for more than thirty years. For years, when I was Co-Director of College Counseling at Colorado Academy, we brought Harry in to lead an essay workshop for our seniors, and I watched him distill a lifetime of writing lessons into a couple of hours. Ironically enough, Harry Bauld is in fact bald. (And he wouldn't mind my joking about that!) His 1987 book, On Writing the College Application Essay, is still one I recommend...

It’s not just fewer eighteen-year-olds. It’s a culture that has slowly, decisively decided that education is a product with a return, not a process with a becoming. It’s a generation of parents who have been taught — by rankings, by social media, by the sheer economic terror of the middle class — that the only safe education is the legible one. The one with a major, a GPA, a clear line from enrollment to employment. It seems that the news about Hampshire College, a relatively young, somewhat...