<p>icy: I do like the idea of sending in the writing sample as is (ungraded), since the consistency of the grading is questionable. But that could lead to another problem:</p>
<p>Several years ago, I had a meeting with an admissions counselor for a highly ranked elite prep school, and she was lamenting the fact that they had switched that year from requiring handwritten essays to allowing typed ones. “We’re going to miss the handwritten essays…they tell us so much about the students”, she said wi$tfully. Jeez. Scary.</p>
<p>Another relevant anecdote: I had a 10th grade History teacher who returned a long written report (only writing done for that class) with a grade of “C”, and it included the comment “it appears as if a lot of this is not in your own words.” Guess it was too well written for him to believe I had done it. It was in fact mine, and so I returned with several “A” essays that I had written for English and showed them to him, and he grudgingly changed the grade. The jerk had essentially accused me of plagiarism, and had no proof to back it up.</p>
<p>How can these admissions folks really be that confident about what they’re doing, unless there is a significant disconnect between the essay and all other indicators of the student’s writing ability?</p>