Bad Writing and College Admissions

Bad Writing and College Admissions September 30, 2013 Bev Taylor is frequently quoted in the press on highly selective college admissions. Yesterday, an intern at The New Republic misquoted her and included inaccurate information (photo credit: Jawed Karim). Our Founder, Bev Taylor, was (mis)quoted in an article in The New Republic yesterday entitled College Admissions Requirements in America Are Crazy. Heres a Solution. In every single article that we discuss in our college admissions blog, we link to that article and, in doing so, drive traffic to that publication. For this article in The New Republic, we will do no such thing. Heres why: In the original version of the article, the writer (who, according to her LinkedIn profile, happens to be an intern  who began at The New Republic this very month) misquoted Bev and included erroneous information about Ivy Coachs fees. In fact, when citing our fee for a full package, Alice Robb falsely stated that we charged a certain amount and then cited her source with a 2008 Forbes article. Ms. Robb, what makes you think that a business charges the same amount in 2013 as they did in 2008? And you relied on another journalist to even get that other figure, which, too, was inaccurate at the time. Youre supposed to be a journalist. You could have found out what we actually charge by reaching out to us. Its not that hard. The New Republic has since retracted this but its too little, too late. As you may know from reading our college admissions blog, Bev is in the press regularly. She is quoted in everything from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal to The Dartmouth and USA Today. As you can see from our In The News page, Bev spends quite a bit of time giving quotes to journalists. But this intern with less than a full months experience on the job, Alice Robb, misquoted her and her editor, Ryan Kearney, has refused to change the quote. This was the quote that Bev gave as she keeps detailed records of all quotes that she gives as well as the time and date of the phone calls: â€Å"So few kids can write. I just read an essay where the student was patting himself on the back so hard that there was no way he could come across as a likable candidate in the minds of admissions counselors.† Instead of using this quote, Alice Robb jumbled words together, inserted her own words to her liking, and what she wrote isnt even proper English. Shame on Ryan Kearney, Alice Robb, and The New Republic. Its just plain bad, unprofessional journalism and if The New Republic wants to establish itself as a respected source of journalism for the future, its got a whole lot to learn. We demand a retraction.