ESSAYS ARE A SHAM PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME

College Essays
1

<p>I have a son in high school and I am truly perplexed as to why colleges put so much emphasis on the essay. I understand that GPA AND SAT/ACT scores are the main thing, but I have to laugh at this whole essay nonsense.</p>

<p>Believe me, I understand WHY the essay is important. It shows the writing skills of a student, and it also allows the admissions committee to get to know the student. </p>

<p>Here is the big thing for me. My son knows students who pay, yes pay professional writers to write these essays for them!! There are busineeses that have a student give them a list of off the activites they do, etc etc, they look at the questions, and meet with the students, and basically write the darn thing for them, with the input from the student.</p>

<p>This to me is a sham and is laughable. Dont the colleges, from a C school to Harvard and Yale know that this stuff is going on?? I laugh when I see that colleges want a "killer essay" Killer essay my butt!! What a bunch of garbage.</p>

<p>I am not saying all kids do this but trust me, a decent majority are getting, not only major help writing these essays, but are also getting them written for them for 1500.00!!!</p>

<p>My question is, why not just go back to the GPA, SAT, ACTIVITIES and STOP WITH THIS SILLY ESSAY NONSENSE!!
Wake up UNIVERSITIES, Some of your applicants are not even writing these essays. They are just giving the ghost writer all of their info, and giving input, and letting the writer do the rest. Is this fair??</p>

<p>I know colleges go on line and can spot plagerism if a kid copies an essay from online or something like that. I get it, the universities have the technology to spot an essay if it is basically copied from online, but they cannot detect an essay written for them by a professional.</p>

<p>I just feel that it puts the good apples at a disadvantage. Thoughts??</p>

2

<p>This is why, when our daughter did brilliantly on her ACT writing portion the second time she took it, we decided to send that entire set of scores to the colleges even though her composite score this second go-round was a little lower than the first go-round. We figured it was important that the colleges see she actually could write, since no one in admissions can ever be sure that the essays they’re reading on applications are written by the students. </p>

3

<p>Woah, $1500? I ought to go into business for myself…</p>

<p>I can’t say I particularly blame people – assuming the fact that there are no outright lies told, having a better written version of yourself makes it a lot easier to communicate who you are to an admissions team.That being said, the ‘soul’ of an essay often shines through, so if someone is an unexciting candidate to the core, I don’t think there’s a team of professional writers out there that could change that.</p>

4

<p>You can assume that the colleges know a lot more about it than you do. </p>

5

<p>College admissions officers talk about this all the time, and here’s what they normally say. First, the writing of a teenager sounds different than the writing of an adult. Second, admissions officers say that the best way to tell if a stellar essay was really written by a student is to look at their Critical Reading SAT score or Writing ACT score. If an essay is amazing, but the applicant’s ACT Writing score was a 5, that might prompt a call to that applicant’s guidance counselor. Also, as above posters mentioned, schools know much more about the essay-writing industry than you do. Along with this, they probably are much more adept at spotting purchased essays. And yes, colleges do know exactly what is going on. In fact, it may be one of the main reasons some schools require the writing component of the ACT.</p>

6

<p>$1500 is peanuts. Michelle Hernandez’ esssy writing boot camp is $16,000.
<a href=“http://www.hernandezcollegeconsulting.com/application-bootcamp/”>http://www.hernandezcollegeconsulting.com/application-bootcamp/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

7

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<p>What a rip off. Doesn’t even look like the staff actually write the essays for the students.</p>

8

<p>I was going to comment that it is possible the OP’s son knows students whose families have ponied up for a private college counselor, and the kid is getting a lot of editing help and support from that person. Not uncommon for someone (kid talking about his essay situation, OP’s own kid…) to add a bit of embellishment to the story to make it sound worse than it is. There is plenty of editing help out here if your kid wants to avail himself of it, and it is free (would recommend finding a parent reader vs a student one, though).</p>

9

<p>Why not just discredit GPA too? During my time, I knew plenty of people who cheated their way through high school by trading homework and test bank answers; it’s not fair. </p>

<p>Sarcasm aside, the assumption is that the essays are original and written by the student. Even if the student does hire professional writers to write it, it’s his loss in forfeiting an opportunity to reflect upon his high school career and express oneself. The fact that there are cheaters is more of an indication of how desperate some students have gotten over the last few years rather than a flaw in the system itself.</p>

10

<p>This might help, too. A Tufts admissions officer answered questions regarding college “consultants,” and this is what he said: “The vast majority of the consultants I’ve met are grossly incompetent. Truly, they are so ignorant of what goes on that they are ignorant even of their own ignorance… I know excellent consultants, too. Many of them, actually. The ones I’m talking about above are specifically the ones you’d pay to write an essay. The ones who would write an essay for you aren’t the excellent ones, and they aren’t to be trusted. If they’d lie for you for a buck, they’d lie to you for a buck.”</p>

11

<p>My perspective…as a parent who’s been volunteering to read quite a few essays here at CC. With no experience, I was able – in about a week – to spot those essays that are penned by others…and those written by the kids. Its not really the quality…its actually kind of hard to describe it…but you just know…and just think what an admissions counselor could do with his/her intuition…I don’t believe these essay businesses work…even in the best-case scenario, they wash all of the personality & voice out of the applicant.</p>

<p>I will say that I did read one essay here – by a Harvard applicant – that was truly powerful…and clearly written by the applicant. </p>