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Note: I originally posited this on Writing, but someone told me to post it here because the question is grammatical in nature and not about the writing itself.

I am writing a scholarship essay and one of my sentences is "Although both of my parents have bachelor’s degrees now, they were not as well educated or stably employed when I was growing up." There are probably other things wrong with this sentence, but when I asked someone to read it over she suggested that I use "so" instead of "as". I looked it up, and I found that generally negative comparisons use "so" (but maybe can use as?), so it would be correct in this context, but one does not necessarily sound better than the other and I do not know which is more grammatically correct.

Bonus: she also suggested replacing "or stably employed" with "with stable employment". What about "and not stably employed." Thoughts?

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    Most people would expect an "as-adjective-as" comparative construction in a sentence like this. I think I would put "that" in place of "as" . i.e. "they were not (that) well educated or stably employed when I was growing up."
    – Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_
    Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 18:39
  • Call us both pedantic, but my teacher asserted it was She is not so tall as he is but She is as tall as he is. This ELL question suggests more books support this, so we may have a bigger issue at hand than which is more idiomatic. Neither my teacher nor I am a native speaker of English, but he is well read. The rule may be outdated, or, as I started off saying, people might just have stopped caring.
    – niamulbengali
    Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 18:56
  • So...use "as"? This is for a STEM scholarship by the way, so probably the last thing on the committee's mind will be "so" or "as".
    – englishisconfusing
    Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 19:02
  • I would re-order it. "Although both of my parents have bachelor’s degrees now, when I was growing up they were less well educated and lacked stable employment." I would move "now" to before "have" and I'd leave out "of", but it's a matter of taste.
    – Old Brixtonian
    Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 19:20
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    Thank you for the suggestion. That is way better than the original phrasing.
    – englishisconfusing
    Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 19:27

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“Not as well educated” is only used with as and must compare persons or things that can be educated: Alice was not as well educated as Bob.

“Not so well educated” can also be used with that to mean educated beyond an ability: Charlie was not so well educated that he couldn't clean out the pig pen.

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    Google 5grams show that while 'not so well educated as' is not as common as 'not as well educated as', it is still used by a significant minority. (Checking shows that so ... as is followed mainly by NPs, with the odd main clause ....)
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Aug 5, 2021 at 14:59

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