<p>I’m sure people cheat and game the system! I just don’t think a lot of college counselors write the entire essay. </p>
<p>Yes, I see some of the gaming in my own line of work. A couple of examples…
Some years back, I had a student with failing grades who was in an alternative high school program taking the most minimal courses to get a diploma. The parent had most of the contact with me in lieu of the student, no matter how hard I tried to insist that the student needed to respond to my emails to the student. When I would send revision feedback on the essay in the middle of the work/school day, the parent would send back a new draft when the kid had to be in school! It was so obvious the parent was writing the essays and I was inadvertently “tutoring” the parent on HIS writing, not his child’s! </p>
<p>I work with students on annotated activity resumes. Before we ever get to this step, I already have a run down of their activities from a questionnaire they fill out when we start working together. I have on several occasions, found things on the activity resume drafts for the applications that either were not on the initial list they shared with me, or just presented radically differently in terms of years or hours spent and achievements and what not. I ALWAYS question these discrepancies that raise flags and have been able to get these kids to change things that are not accurate or truthful. I also question amounts of time a few kids have given to an activity when I know it is impossible and doesn’t add up. </p>
<p>I had a kid one year who did “community service” with his religious youth group. When it came time to do the resume, the hours he wrote that he spent on this were not realistic given what else he did, and when I asked him to elaborate on what he called “mission trips” on his resume, he wrote that he had gone to help with Hurricane Katrina. I was surprised after all the months we had worked together and the detailed quesitonnaire he had filled out for me and even his first draft of this resume document never mentioned something as significant as this until I asked him to be specific a to where he went on these “mission trips.” So, when I acted surprised that he never had mentioned the Katrina trip in any other papers on his activities and not even on the first draft of this resume for this annotated activity, he said, he “forgot.” As I copy all correspondence with students onto their parents, the father wrote me back and admitted that his kid made it up. Duh, it was so obvious. But when flags are raised for me on any documents, I always question them and I mention to the applicant that if it raises a flag for me, it might for an adcom, which would be a negative, and they always change it. I just am not willing to be a part of any misrepresentation. I’m very against it. Do kids/parents do it? I’m sure they do. But I will not be a part of that kind of gaming.</p>