"DDI" Daddy-Did-It...new admissions office acronym for essays that look too good

Parent Cafe
1

<p>...new to me at least....I got a kick out of this one....</p>

<p>Boston Globe article, albeit a couple of weeks old, on the issue of applicants getting too much adult/outside help:
College</a> applications can be too good - The Boston Globe</p>

<p>INTRO

[quote]
As college admissions officers sift through thousands of application essays penned by eager-to-please high school seniors, they increasingly encounter writing that sparkles a bit too brightly or shows a poise and polish beyond the years of a typical teenager.</p>

<p>With the scramble to get into elite colleges at a fever pitch and with a rising number of educational consultants and college essay specialists ready to give students a competitive edge, admissions officers are keeping a sharp lookout for essays that might have had an undue adult influence. In some admissions offices, such submissions receive the dubious distinction DDI, short for "Daddy Did It."</p>

<p>Colleges are now cross-referencing student essays against the SAT writing sample, and, if doubts linger, will ask for a graded writing sample or raise their concern with the student's high school guidance counselor. Harvard even passes along suspiciously strong essays to professors for a scholarly opinion.</p>

<p>"There's an awful lot of talk in the admissions profession about this," said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions and financial aid. "It's very difficult to know how much of it is the student's own work. It's just very hard to spot."</p>

<p>The concern over heavy-handed adult involvement is mounting as the admissions essay has become a pivotal part of the application, a key way for students to stand out from the throngs of applicants with top grades and SAT scores. In the past five years, the percentage of colleges attributing "considerable importance" to the college essay has risen from 19 to 28, behind grades, strength of classes, and standardized test scores, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.</p>

<p>Admissions officers say they would almost never deny admission solely over a suspicious essay, unless they could prove it was plagiarized. There are many talented writers, and it would be a shame to misjudge them, they say. But at competitive schools that reject the vast majority of students, a hint of doubt can tilt the balance.

[/quote]
</p>

2

<p>Oh, PC, this is as timely as WUSTL admission data. Marite beat you to it: :)</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/460472-boston-globe-college-applications-can-too-good.html?highlight=DDI[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/460472-boston-globe-college-applications-can-too-good.html?highlight=DDI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>Some schools require a graded paper to be submitted, serving as a partial check that the quality and style don’t unreasonably differ.</p>

4

<p>alas, I’ve been out of town for a couple of weeks & obviously not been keeping up with the forum! My apologies to Marite for double threading.</p>

5

<p>what if that applicant was applying to Harvard with a 800 writing and straight As in english…altho nothing spectacular like nothing published or essay contests won…how would u tell if he wrote it or not?</p>

6

<p>I think that is the point. A kid with a great score in the writing portion of the SAT, good grades in English and History, evidence of lots of outside reading, then a spectacular essay makes sense.</p>

<p>On the other hand - if the grades in writing intensive courses are weak, Writing SAT low, etc., and a student hands in Hemmingway, there’s a suspicion. </p>

<p>I think admissions people are looking for consistency - not just in the essay, but in extracurriculars, teacher rec’s etc. They should all sound like the same kid.</p>

7

<p>Just to restate what I wrote in the other thread, admission officers are not widely using “DDI”. I have never heard it at any conference, on our professional listserve, or in casual conversations with other admission officers. </p>

<p>I imagine someone mentioned this “term” in an interview and the reporter assumed it was pervasive.</p>

8

<p>Cross-checking against the SAT writing sample?! Harsh!! I spent SO many hours on my college essay; my SAT writing sample was hardly even legible (though my overall good scores would back up my, what I believed to be, strong essay). I think the SAT writing sample measures nothing. The best essays are chewed over for a very long time. Also my handwriting sucks, heh.</p>

9

<p>^Agreed. My overall writing score was good, but my essay was terrible. Some of the prompts are just too “out there” to intelligently consider in 25 minutes.</p>

10

<p>Unless the CB has made a change to how it sends the report, it’s extremely tedious to check the SAT writing sample. Each test date has one, massive file of all the writing samples. If you want to fine one, you have to search through thousands to find it. The scans themselves weren’t always clear.</p>

<p>Perhaps the scanning has gotten better, but back when the writing section debuted, we didn’t find the way the samples were sent useful.</p>

11

<p>The schools always claim they can tell. I am not so sure, or there would not be so many consultants.</p>

12

<p>This thread makes me laugh. S refused our suggestions that he put more time and effort into his application essays. Said ‘that isn’t me’, and wrote very succinctly. He did not like the idea that ‘you have to play the game’ to get into college.</p>

13

<p>FYI-- I’ve traced the DDI term back to a 2004 book on college application essays (published by College Board) by Sarah McGinty…
see #6: [College</a> Essay](<a href=“http://www.liberal-arts-college.com/getting-into-college/College-Essay/]College”>http://www.liberal-arts-college.com/getting-into-college/College-Essay/)</p>

<p>

</p>

14

<p>Nice work, Papa!</p>

<p>From the “About us” page of her college consulting business’ website:

I still have never heard anyone use the term and I’ve been at a few more schools…</p>

15

<p>Why would they assume DDI? Why not MDI? Sexist. ;)</p>

16

<p>I think the SAT writing section is a fantastic idea. It should not be the same calibre of an essay written over a period of time and no one would expect that. But if you can’t write a coherent, grammatical short essay with reasonable logic in your own words in a test situation, something is amiss. I think it is far more informative than everything else, all of which has been gamed and coached to death. I’m sure this will be too some day (sigh). </p>

<p>As an adcom looking at GMATs, the analytical writing examples has been HUGELY valuable. Far more than the other scores or TOEFLs. </p>

<p>Maybe the SAT writing section will address the issue of increasing numbers of kids who are coming into college with great grades and scores, but who do not have the level of writing needed in university (either the logical thinking or the grammar skills). Even when teaching at an Ivy we were stunned at times by some of the writing coming across our desks.</p>

17

<p>But if you can’t write a coherent, grammatical short essay with reasonable logic in your own words in a test situation, something is amiss.</p>

<p>Perhaps what is amiss is an otherwise high-calibre student’s ability to write well under pressure. For example, Reed College says that “… Reed students will almost never encounter an analogous exam in a Reed class. Our concerns about the SAT writing section mirror those raised recently by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Like the NCTE, we worry that the standardized and time-limited nature of the SAT essay will encourage a kind of artificial, mechanized, writing-for-the-test that seems antithetical to the reflective and analytical writing taught in a liberal arts curriculum. Like the NCTE, we further believe that good writing involves rewriting, something the SAT’s 25-minute essay does not allow.”</p>

18

<p>Whoa, I hope all of these all-knowing application readers are familiar with the qualities of Asperger’s syndrome. It is common for these kids to write and speak with superior vocabularies and deadly logic in what is called “the little professor” syndrome. They sound much more like an adult than a teen, but won’t always have outstanding test scores or grades because of problems with maturity, social cues and interpreting directions. I would hate to see kids with this problem face yet another obstacle - that their writing is “too good!”</p>

19

<p>Wouldn’t this be a logical compromise-
Give students the prompts, or several prompts to choose from, or better yet, give students the subject matter upon which their prompt will be based- ahead of time.<br>
When they get to the SAT testing site, they still write their own essay, but they have had the time to analyse and ponder. This takes care of the pressure, while still ensuring that the writing samples are theirs, and replicates the atmosphere the student will experience in college during a typical ‘blue book’ exam. (Or do they take essay-style exams still?)</p>

20

<p>“we worry that the standardized and time-limited nature of the SAT essay will encourage a kind of artificial, mechanized, writing-for-the-test that seems antithetical to the reflective and analytical writing taught in a liberal arts curriculum.”</p>

<p>Bah. A sonnet is at least as artificial and mechanized as an SAT essay. A good, confident writer can make herself understood in any genre with a minimum of preparation. No future star of the English department at Reed is going to have her literary spirit crushed by writing one five-paragraph hourglass essay.</p>