Colin Rhys Hill

You should know that the Oxford interview tutors for politics spent a lot of time talking to me about my TCR essay in the interview. Oxford doesn't recognize or consider extra-curriculars/sports in the admissions process (no rowing recruits) because they are so focused on academics. So I thought it was pretty high praise of the Review that they were so interested in my essay (at that time it had not won the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize).

Also, FYI, most of the "get into college" publications I read referred to The Concord Review as the "Intel Science Competition" of the humanities and the only serious way to get academic work noticed.

[TCR Author and Emerson Prize winner who went from high school in Atlanta, Georgia
to Christ Church College, Oxford.]

San Diego City College

Dear Mr. Fitzhugh:

My name is Peter D. Haro and I am the Chair of the History and Political Science Department at San Diego City College in San Diego, California. I read the article about you and The Concord Review in the New York Times about a month ago and I must say that I had a rejuvenating moment as I read about you and The Concord Review. I also believe that student writing is an imperative that must not be allowed to decline. Unfortunately, in today’s culture of testing mania, texting, etc., good research writing is something that is often overlooked or ignored. I have students who are dumbfounded when I tell them that a research assignment is part of their semester grade. However, I do have students that also rise to the occasion and produce outstanding undergraduate research papers. My question to you is, are you accepting submissions from community college students? I think that this would be an excellent opportunity for my students who do intend to transfer and many of them have moved on to top-tier colleges and universities all over the United States, such as Columbia, Cornell, Stanford, UC Berkeley and UCLA. Please let me know if this is something that The Concord Review is interested in or if you are aware of any similar organizations dedicated to publishing the research of community college students. Thank you for your time in this matter and I hope to hear from you soon.

National Writing Board

[Professor Stotsky's comment on a four-page assessment report from the National Writing Board on a high school research paper from Dubai] [www.tcr.org]


"What extraordinary feedback for a high school student to get! How lucky he/she is, even if the paper received a poor rating and doesn't get published. That feedback is worth more than probably a whole year of college teaching. How can we get current high school history and English teachers to understand what it means to write like a historian?

This should be a case study example in every workshop that will be given to high school English and history teachers to understand what the Common Core 'literacy' standards imply."


Sandra Stotsky
former Deputy Commissioner of Education in Massachusetts
Professor of Education
University of Arkansas