Author(s) :

Saaya Accapadi.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

This study aims to understand how gender influences the writing style of students applying to college. It uses the variationist approach to sociolinguistics to collect and analyze data in order to demonstrate a difference between the way male and female students use language in their college essays. All the essays analyzed come from the book 50 Successful Swarthmore Application Essays by William Han and Sean Cheng (2020), which contains application essays by students who come from many globally and economically diverse backgrounds. Results show that male applicants had a higher rate of personal pronoun usage while female students had a higher rate of hedging within their essays.