<p>I'm in the process of writing my personal statement for IR at Sciences Po Paris (in English). We actually just have to answer three concrete questions. I live in Spain and don't really have a "mentor" to help me out with the application process (except for maybe my mom who thinks everything I do is absolutely brilliant)...So basically I have no clue whether my essay is too vague or if it's all right. I'm one of those borderline applicants, so I guess having a good personal statement is very important if I want to have a shot. </p>
<p>I'm wondering whether you guys think an online essay editing service is worth the money. I'm not really looking for someone to look at the grammar, but rather an editor that knows what graduate schools look for and that can tell me which parts of the essay are fine and which parts need to be further developed. I googled "graduate school essay editing" and got some results, but they all hovered around 200 bucks for just one read. Anyone know of a good service at a reasonable price? </p>
<p>You can try to see if someone on the forums can take a look at your essay - even if they don’t end up editing it, they can at least tell you whether it’s good or not, and give you a better picture of the necessity of an editing service.</p>
<p>Depending on when you’re applying, I can do just that. Send me a PM if you’re interested.</p>
<p>I’ll say that I’ve once seen a 3000 USD essay written by an essay service company that was ordered/purchased by someone in an Asian country. They ended up getting a full ride to OSU for their PhD. The essay (SOP) was probably ~800 words in length or so.</p>
<p>I’ve helped over a dozen people write their SOPs before, successfully applied to Berkeley for a PhD program, have a kick-azz GRE verbal score, and contribute monthly to a leading international magazine in my area. I was (very) curious to know what a $3000 essay looked like. Fortunately, I got a chance to look at one.</p>
<p>I’ll say this. It was outstanding. Wow. It was frikken’ amazing. Like, it had all the rhetorical elements, it was focused, it was sincere, and best of all, it seemed completely<em>authentic. Wow. If I had read it as an adcom, I wouldn’t have suspected at</em>all that it wasn’t written by the applicant. This person was from an Asian country, so the essay even had minor grammatical errors scattered all throughout the paper, further implying its legitimacy. Plainly speaking, the quality of the essay I read was at a level I simply cannot write at. If I was an adcom, this applicant would have been a slam-dunk admit.</p>
<p>So my experience with this one essay is that, as dishonest as it may be, Yes, some of these services apparently do produce quality work.</p>
<p>Armstrong, I’d have to generally disagree. If you write well, you should be able to generate a strong personal statement that expresses your own interests much more effectively than can be done by an outside company/writer. Additionally, to be honest, your claims of a “full ride to a PhD” are kind of pointless, because virtually ALL PhDs are “full rides”! Finally, for many disciplines, your personal statement, while important, pales in comparison to the interview, where the rubber really meets the road! A fantastic essay can only take you to the final round, not to admission!</p>
<p>What are you disagreeing with? That an essay company can’t produce a quality essay? Or that I didn’t read an outstanding essay produced by an essay service?</p>
<p>“If you write well”. Well, what if you don’t?</p>
<p>Have you ever helped anyone with their SOP? Was their essay better or worse after your involvement?</p>
<p>Have you ever read a bad SOP?</p>
<p>Some biographies go on to win Pulitzer prizes. Are you telling me if these biographied folks wrote autobiographies instead of having someone write their life story, their book would have done even better?</p>
<p>Try telling your opinion to someone who doesn’t have English as a first language. Or if you have a 2nd language yourself, why don’t you try writing a compelling SOP in your second language. We’ll then see how “effectively” you manage to express your interests and whatnot.</p>
<p>BTW. A good essay service will write an essay for the individual. They will use the individual’s history to guide the content of the essay.</p>
<p>The essay I read, read like a first-person account of their motivation and talent for graduate school.</p>
<p>So there might be a misunderstanding. This was not an xerox of a essay that anyone else could have used to apply with. The only person this essay could have worked for, was the applicant himself.</p>
<p>Further, not all applicants to PhD programs are interviewed. Internationals do not always get interviewed.</p>
<p>When I was accepted to Berkeley, I was not interviewed. And I’m not making this up.</p>
<p>Wow… you apparently don’t like to have someone disagree with you.</p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t have time to answer your petty questions, but most PhD programs are funded by the program itself via research funding.</p>
<p>And I am not really saying such a service can’t help you significantly with an essay; what I am saying is that the help they provide probably isn’t worth $3,000 and is most certainly unethical.</p>
<p>Your other questions were more ad hominem and need not be answered. ('Though the answers are “yes”, “that’s a different case”, and “yes, I am bilingual and would be comfortable writing a college essay in my second language and, in fact, have done so when I applied for a program at a foreign school and was admitted”).</p>
<p>Frankly, if you’re not comfortable writing an SOP in English, how are you going to be at writing journal articles (or even reading them for that matter) in English? I am all for studying internationally and learning a second language, but graduate school is hard enough as it is. If the university evaluates that this person’s essay indicates weak English skills and that he/she may not be able to succeed in a given program, that is the university’s decision. Trying to cheat that will ultimately hurt the applicant more than help him/her.</p>
<p>I agree that it is a great idea to see if you can get some feedback on these forums, especially before forking over any money. People here, unlike your mother, are not going to sugar-coat. They might give vague and/or useless feedback in some cases, but chances are good you’ll be able to find some excellent advice on the strengths and weaknesses. </p>
<p>Also consider reading as many other essays as possible, from a variety of disciplines. You’ll get a feel for what is compelling and what just doesn’t work, and maybe some ideas you can use in your own. You can find them on the web, and ask around on the forums.</p>
<p>Tangentially, what helped me the most with writing my SOP was talking with a friend about why I wanted to go to graduate school. Just having those conversations let me easily explore ideas I hadn’t really put to words before, and provided automatic feedback during the discussion. When I sat down to write, it was all things I had already verbalized and hashed out in a conversation. Plus, it helped me keep “my own voice” through the piece.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. Apumic and EvoViro, what you guys suggest is a good idea. If someone could just read over and tell me if it’s acceptable, I would be more than satisfied. </p>
<p>The programs that I’m applying to are International Relations and European Affairs. If anyone’s willing to lend me 10 minutes of their time, I’ll PM the statement to them.</p>
<p>Just have someone who is a professional writer/scribe to look over your statement. They will help express yourself better by rewriting/rephrasing your sentences (in your own words). You don’t need to shell out thousands of dollars to get into a top program.</p>
I am a high school AP English teacher. I edit lots of essays for local students. I charge $100 per essay to students whose parents can afford to pay. My students have gotten into Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Penn and Yale. Most attend state colleges. I teach in a public high school/not in an affluent area. I do not write their essays. I do guide them. I believe you should get someone you trust to check over your essays.
When my son applied to Harvard and Penn, I paid a few hundred dollars to have Pithy Edits check over his essays. They were good. They were online. I tested a few other online editing services first; I did not like the changes they recommended, nor did he. They killed his personal voice and made his essays polished, but passionless. The owner of Pithy Edits was a Harvard graduate/English and History major. I googled him to check on his background and he was an editor of one of Harvard’s school papers. I read a few of his college articles. I don’t know if Pithy Edits is still online; this was several years ago. I don’t know if Daniel Chung still edits. The other editors who worked for him were not as good as Daniel. Good luck.