Kelly Christie said that as a freshman, when she and her classmates would have peer-editing sessions, she often returned unmarked compositions because she felt her English skills were not up to par.

But Christie (junior-secondary education) said that because she had to work harder in English 015 (Rhetoric and Composition) than in high school, her grades improved.

"Last semester, I edited a group paper for one of my courses, and I was amazed to see how poorly my fellow [class] members' writing skills were," she said.

Christie is not the only college student who feels disadvantaged when it comes to English courses.

In a recent national study, The Chronicle of Higher Education found that 44 percent of college faculty members surveyed said students are not prepared for college-level writing. In addition, out of 1,098 professors surveyed, only 6 percent said students are "very well prepared" for college-level writing.

The difference between high school- and college-level writing is that "generally, in high school there is a strict structure that students must follow -- [in college] we ask our students to form their own opinions and arguments," Katherine Bode-Lang, a graduate student who teaches English, said.

Bode-Lang said she tries to be understanding since many of her English 015 students have not written an essay since high school, but added that she typically sees students' writing improve within two assignments.

Julia Covelli (freshman-education and English) said that despite being more prepared than most of her peers because of high school Advanced Placement English classes, her transition to college-level writing still wasn't easy.

"For 12 years of your life, you learn a certain way to write," Covelli said. "However, when you come to college, professors make a big deal out of exploring new ways to write that can vary greatly to the training received in high school."

Stacy Lynn Dowell (junior-English) said many instructors understand that their students may struggle in class because they were students once, too, but added that students need to adjust to each professor's individual demands.

"I know that for most non-English majors, they thought all that English nonsense was over, and it's like they erased all their memory files on how to write," Dowell said.

According to the study, 45 percent of faculty members feel that overall, "today's students are not as well prepared as their counterparts of 10 years ago."

But Jon Olson, the director of the Center for Excellence in Writing at Penn State, said students being unprepared for college will always be a concern for faculty members.

"University teachers have complained that students are unprepared, for antiquity," Olson said. "Our job is to find students where they are and to teach them. We can't expect for students to already know about the subject."

Bode-Lang said writing is improved by practice.

"English 015 is useful and necessary -- it's like a little incubator space," she said. "Students need to take those skills they have and translate them into essays that are more original and have more content."