The Letdown by Steve Meredith (SRUSteve09) - Short - As Mike prepares to move on to grad school at Yale, he, Dave, and Kate discuss what it takes to be remembered after college, and if anything they ever did outside the classroom really mattered. 18 pages - pdf, format 8)

This is good chunk of a bigger story, I think.  Meaning, I believe this is meant to be extended to be complete.  A good start to a relationship type of movie.  You have good bonds between the characters and I like the way they interact.  Good stuff there.

Now:

Formatting is off.  Too many words in all caps.  You do not need a colon after the character's names.

Watch telling us stuff that we can't see.  IE:

HE has just graduated from the University of
Pittsburgh's Political Science program and is having a party
to celebrate HIS graduation.

Fine for a story, not for a script.  Have that revealed by the characters somehow, otherwise the audience doesn't know it.

Don't split text up between pages.  Throw a page break in, or make sure to have a continued note.

Watch your use of the word pause.  It's distracting at the least.

Work on some edits, and maybe expanding this some.

I think you have got the basis here for a reasonable story, it could benefit from being shortened a little though. The majority of the script is long chunks of dialogue, it might be a good idea to put in some more action to balance things out.

The main thing you need to work on though is the formatting. You don't need to use caps to write HIS drink and HIS apartment etc. You also only need to cap the names the first time you introduce the character. No colons after the character name.

When Mike and Dave are outside at the party, you say everyone else is gone and they are the only guests left outside. But if it is Mike's place then he can't exactly be a guest there.

Also it is revealed that Mike and Dave are best friends, yet somehow Mike doesn't know that Dave did a bartending course and worked in a bar? How is that possible? And Dave apparently made $1200 a night tending bar, sorry but that is very unrealistic. Try $300 maybe if he is lucky.

Similarly, Dave forgets where Mike is going to work at the end of the story. Yet when Mike tells him he is going to Boston he pulls out the girls number and says she wanted him to have it. So obviously he knew where he was going if he was going to suggest he call this new girl. I know you are trying to use exposition here but try and avoid having the characters explain info to each other that they would otherwise know.

I think you could focus more of the story between Mike and Kate rather than just Mike and Dave discussing the situation. You could try showing the tension between Kate and Mike, have them avoiding eye contact across the crowded party, making uncomfortable smalltalk etc. Just some things to show there is tension between them and let the reader imagine what is going on rather than telling us everything. So some more scenes with those two together would benefit your story IMO.

Cheers,
Tim.