<p>I recently came across EssayEdge.com and was curious what College Confidential posters thought. For anyone who doesn't know, it basically edits a crappy personal statement into a perfect essay ready for Harvard Admissions. This service almost seems too good to be true, so is it? If colleges find out will they throw out your statement? What are the pro's and con's of such services? Are they common in this cutthroat admissions process?</p>
<p>Thoughts, comments anyone?</p>
<p>I doubt they can really do that great of a job. They don't know you. And personal statements should be written in a personal style, not some formalized one size fits all deal.</p>
<p>But from my understanding they just reshape what you give them, so its still personal, but written better. I can imagine it might be easy to see through if your reading thousands of essays, you might recognize a pattern.</p>
<p>I had this done for one of freshman applications, and I ended up losing alot of money on it. They edited my essay to the point that it began to sound like a robot had written it. I threw it away and decided to write my own essay with my own voice. </p>
<p>Essay Edge is like paying your college professors to help you edit your essay, except that your professors would do a better job. These people are not professionals. In fact, my sister called about applying for a job with them, and they offered her one without even knowing her background or anything. I think you should write your personal essays PERSONALLY and then take them to a professor or to the writing center at your college and have someone look at it. You could also have peers look at it.</p>
<p>The bottom line is, your essay is about you. If you have professionals edit it, it may lose its sincere, original voice, which is really what the admissions officer wants. All i'm saying is that simple editing is not unethical at all, but just be careful about it.</p>