Three Agreement Flags in a Scholarship Essay

True errors: (1) “Each ... have submitted” - the subject is “Each,” singular, so the verb should be “has submitted.” (2) “neither the club nor the school’s science department have approved” - with neither/nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject, “department,” so it should be “has approved.” Register choice: “everybody ... their own tools.” Singular “their” is widely accepted in informal and many formal contexts, but a strict formal essay may prefer “his or her own tools” or a recast plural. The teacher’s three marks likely target the two verbs plus the pronoun in “everybody ... their”; only the verbs are clear errors, while the pronoun is a style/register decision.

Revised: “Each of the students in the robotics club, along with an advisor, has submitted a project proposal; however, neither the club nor the school’s science department has approved the budget, and every team member needs to bring his or her own tools.” The revision changes “have submitted” to “has submitted” to agree with “Each,” and “have approved” to “has approved” to agree with “department.” It replaces singular “their” with “his or her” for a conservative formal register, though singular “their” would be acceptable in many edited contexts. “Everybody on the team” becomes “every team member” to avoid the informal tone and to keep the third item parallel with the groups named earlier.