<p>I think they should stick the kids in a room and then give them topics for the essay to be hand written in those old blue books and turned in. Subjects will not be disclosed and will vary.</p>
<p>That might work for the MBA program that was the subject of the Higher Ed. article … but the last thing that most college ad coms are looking for in an application essay is a few thousand different 500-word treatments of an assigned topic. </p>
<p>They are looking primarily for information that gives them some insight into the individual – and only secondarily for evidence of basic written communication skills.</p>
<p>And yet, for all three of my kids, writing the essay was part of an intensely personal journey that helped them to define themselves as they prepared for the next phase of their lives.</p>
<p>I guess it’s like the SAT. Some people think it’s okay, some people think it’s evil, some people think it’s a waste of time. It’s funny how people are different that way. And by funny, I mean irrelevant.</p>
<p>My high school uses turnitin. I know how to beat it pretty easily – but I know some kids who have gotten busted.</p>
<p>S2 wrote a number of blog posts that wended their way into one of his major essays for college apps. I suggested to him at one point that he take them down to preserve them from being filched by others. </p>
<p>Neither of my kids have discussed their essays online in a way that someone could pilfer material from them – they turned out to feel pretty protective about those essays. They were intensely personal and reflected a lot of work.</p>
<p>S2’s MS and HS used turnitin and he was able to run drafts through it before turning in a paper. It caught terms-of-art a LOT.</p>
<p>Addressing the topic of admissions essays in general, not plagiarism…</p>
<p>I think at the undergrad level essays are pretty pointless. There’s so much pressure to be “quirky” or “creative” for, IMO, no good reason. Truth is, at 18, most people don’t really know who they are, and if they do, don’t care to write about that, or they haven’t had much “profound” happen to them. I think both of my college essays were pretty unique and decently written–my common app one (which some of the older posters may have read via PM way back when) started by describing a painting of a girl with polio and then expanded the painting metaphor to all the different ways I had “painted” my own life to be different from the “helpless” view of physical disability in the painting–“painting” tracks down a ski hill in a sitski, for example, or “painting” characters as I wrote kanji learning Japanese. My other essay was on the meaning of the word “speech” and how for me (with a minor speech disability) that word came to mean much more what you said (for example, speaking in Japanese speech contest) than saying it in perfectly articulate way. They were decently written, but I didn’t really like them much. Ironically, I felt constrained by the whole pressure to be “profound” or “quirky” or whatever, and they probably didn’t say anything that my letters of rec combined with my app didn’t already convey. </p>
<p>At the grad school level, the whole essay (Statement of Purpose) thing is much more straightforward, enjoyable, and meaningful. My SOP was simply about my path as a researcher, how that lead to what I wanted to study, how the program and faculty I was applying to worked into that plan and to my professional goals. My SOP still showed who I was but who I was as an academic and a future professional–not a sob story or a motivational speech, or an attempt to be funny, just me. I felt like at that point, I finally had something truly interesting–and somewhat meaningful–to say. I liked my SOP much better than my undergrad essays, and this is speaking as someone who’s hobby is creative writing (fiction mostly, a bit of nonfiction).</p>
<p>Agree with psych - part of the reason I so dislike the emphasis on essays is also a personal bias against the precious, overly quirky, weird for the sake of being weird essays I have seen touted as good examples by some of the colleges.</p>
<p>I agree about the fonts. It was terribly naive of Marcinkevage to think that a different font had any relevance. Perhaps she doesn’t do a whole lot of drafting, editing and revising. Why would anyone want to take the chance of typing into an online application and risk typos and similar errors. Also, many have character restrictions and you can track that in Word so you can shape your essay to be within the limits.</p>
<p>Many online feedback or customer service forms are set up this way and I ALWAYS type it into Word and then paste it. So why wouldn’t you do this with something as important as an application essay?</p>
<p>My first suggestion to my son, when he starts his applications, is to write the essay offline. My second suggestion, from reading this article, is to match the font. :- )</p>
<p>Some of my sons’ essays were so patched together, they looked like quilts. Lots of different fonts there. Also if you quote things, and use standard phrases, you can blip on the screen as a possible plaglarizer. I don’t believe that every single essay is carefully read. Just doing the math on the number of admissions employees are there, the number of essays submitted and the key time between Jan and end of March when not only do the entire apps have to be examined, but essays read, decisions made, it just isn’t possible with the number of hours in a day. In addition, the adcoms have to start welcoming the kids and families of the juniors looking at colleges, and they do. When I visited colleges during those time periods, I did not find a bunch of admissions folks pounding salt reading essays. Nor did they appear like they were burning a lot of midnight oil. Most apps get less than 10 minutes perusal. It’s the borderline cases, especially if the student involved has some attribute the school wants but s/he is n’t quite on the admit criterion that involve all of those lengthy council decisions that are often featured as how admissions work. </p>
<p>That is why it concerns me if the adcoms are going to just run essays through a plagiarism program. It can take a lot of time and concerted effort to catch some plagiarized work. You don’t always get a bunch of essays that match among the stack, nor is it always obvious. Young kids tend to talk alike anyways. I"ve read a lot of kids’ essays and there is a sameness there that makes it difficult to catch if someone wrote the whole danged thing. Especially since many of these essays are being edited to the whazooie. </p>
<p>My kids wrote their own essays, and hardly changed a thing when they were edited, but that was not the case with most kids. By the time mom and dad, the English teacher, the Essay tutor, the friend who once worked with admissions, the guidance counselor and any other adult that seems to know something gets through with these essays, it’s hard to say who wrote what.</p>
<p>I think adcoms should refrain from making remarks about essays too. When they start eliminating the subjects and stories that typical high schoolers do own, the essays start getting extremely contrived. One young lady wrote some idiot stuff about Cpt Crunch serial, trying to be precocious and original. Her topics about her parents divorce and grandmother’s death, both heavy on her mind and things that are very much part of her were considered trite and stereotypical. So she writes about CPt Crunch? </p>
<p>I really think that the essay should be another SAT2 type session, where the kids write under proctors, or at the colleges during the visits. That way you know you have the kids’s original writings. I like that the SAT2 has the writing section there. I wonder if the adcoms are comparing those excerpts to the sanitized essays on the apps. I would do so just to see the differences.</p>
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I wouldn’t. Aside from the fact, that both my kids have handwriting that makes reading their essays painful. The SAT essays from my first son were deer in the headlights for the first 15 minutes as he tried to come up with examples for their strange questions and 10 minutes of frantic trying to get something down on paper for the last. His actually college essay was about two weeks of deer in the headlights followed by several days of writing and polishing.</p>
<p>My younger son doesn’t experience the same level of writer’s blocks, but he tried out several different essays before coming up with ones he liked enough to submit.</p>
<p>As for Captain Crunch? I have no problem with it as a jumping off point for an essay.</p>
<p>We keep forgetting that the ad coms aren’t using these essays as writing samples - they are looking at them for some kind of insight into the personalities of the students.</p>
<p>Years ago, we went to a college program at Hopkins. One of the things they did with the kids was talk about what makes a good essay. One of the examples they presented as a good one was about a girl who wanted to be a doctor and she knew that when she was a little girl and saved a lady bug. My daughter thought it was awful and I thought it was contrived, but the Hopkins admissions people thought it was wonderful. </p>
<p>My first job out of college was as an admissions counselor. When I traveled for recruiting, the vast majority of admissions counselors at the college fairs were twentysomethings. Lots of big decisions are being made by very young people.</p>
<p>I have no problem with any subject for an essay when it fulfills its purpose. When it’s because the kids is just trying so hard to be different and to impress the adcoms and avoid being run of the mill, it obscures the personalities. I didn’t see one bit of the student in her Cpt Crunch essay. I saw a student desperately trying to be clever, cute and original. The young lady truly writes well, and has many stories to tell, but just by definition, they tend to be typical.</p>
<p>It’s hard to say how much impact those danged things have anyways. My son’s essay was panned by everyone. Told nothing about his personalty. It was basically a research paper, which I guess does say something about him. But certainly not what anyone including myself, would recommend as a college essay. Two highly selective schools and one other school actually commented on the essay, and someone actually called to personally discuss the thing. Who would have guessed? But this is still not a venue that the gcs would recommend, because who the heck likes to read research papers? Son just hit it lucky that the person reading his app was into the subject matter or referred it to someone who was. </p>
<p>My fourth child is now preparing for the onslaught this fall, and let me tell you, his school had him write the essays over junior years and they have been edited and checked by mentor, English teacher, gc. Many parents have had or will have the essays worked over even further. Sure, there are kids whose essays have not been overtreated but there are too many who have especially for the selective colleges. </p>
<p>In my son’s case, the essays are not likely to make a huge difference as the schools on his list are not particularly selective. All accept more than half of their applicants. Also some of the schools are large, and I cannot believe that they are going to be reading all of those essays or giving them much weight. I know a number of kids who blew off their essays and easily got into state schools where admissions is really by the numbers.</p>
<p>The summer before freshman year of high school, kids taking honors English had to read a novel and take critical notes on it. My S did the assignment with integrity, ie. with no “help.” His work was apparently flagged, however, by one of these anti-plagiarism programs. Without closely examining S’s work as compared with the alleged copied source, the teacher accused him outright of plagiarism. S denied the charge vehemently, and then because he didn’t confess he was sent to his counselor’s office. There, the counselor tried to cajole him into admitting his dishonestly. S continued to deny it and got angry because no one believed him. He asked to be shown what he supposedly had copied from, which was an online source. It turned out that there was nothing at all about his work which even remotely resembled that source as far as note-taking style or even the vast majority of the content.</p>
<p>I had to get involved, and so we printed out the online notes and compared with S’s work word by word. They were only similar to the extent you’d expect when two people are writing about the exact same topic. But it turned out that there was one 7-word phrase that both my S and the other author had quoted from the novel. However, it was a very important sentence which embodied the book’s theme. Anyone intelligent writing about the book would have quoted that line. It was a ridiculous travesty. </p>
<p>Based on that one similarity, the school made a wrong assumption and an unfounded accusation. I should mention that S is Hispanic, and apparently the teacher thought his work was “too good” to have been done by an Hispanic boy, so that probably predisposed her to assume dishonestly even in the absence of compelling evidence.</p>
<p>So my opinion is that these programs are only as good as the people who interpret the results, and therefore must be used very, very carefully.</p>
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<p>But that’s not the POINT of the essay !!! The college ad coms aren’t trying to administer a writing composition test - they are looking for some bit of info that gives them some insight into the kid’s personality and interests – something that brings the applicant to life so that they can make a decision based on a real person and not on a list of stats. </p>
<p>And that’s WHY they don’t spend hours reading those essays – they do enough reading that they can very quickly glance over an essay and get the gist of it. The reason they tend to discourage essays written on topics like the parents divorce or death of a pet is that they want the type of info that will give them some sort of insight as to what the student will add to their campus – something that gives a sense of who the kid is now. </p>
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And I feel sorry for those kids who are trying so hard to impress, when all the ad coms want to see is a piece of information reflecting the student’s voice. You are right that it doesn’t make a difference in many cases – but in many it does, and that’s the point. In many cases the SAT score or GPA is so typical for the applicant pool that it makes no difference – the numbers are good enough to get in, not good enough to impress – but no one advocates leaving those off. In a competitive applications environment the ad coms need to have a reason to admit each and every applicant that comes before them – and if the kid doesn’t have a grandparent who donated half a million to the campus building fund, and isn’t a heavily recruited athlete, and hasn’t yet won international recognition for their accomplishments — the essay might end up being the source of the reason. </p>
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<p>That’s way too many people being part of the essay-writing process … and way too long in the making. My d did have college essay-writing assistance at her high school, senior year – everyone was supposed to submit an essay, it would be read and commented on and returned-- and whatever she submitted to please her high school was never used again, certainly not sent off to any college.</p>
<p>What I found most enlightening about the article:
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<p>As long as admissions offices retain this bliss, they’re going to be happy and the applicants will be trying to crack the code. It’s a never ending game that serves little purpose (and that’s coming from a parent who is happy with 2009-10 admissions results.)</p>
<p>It isn’t just the essays that aren’t always honest. I unfortunately know of a few former students who added club memberships that they stopped participating in shortly after joining and I know of too many who blatantly lied about their participation level in certain clubs. Some also claim to be an officer when they aren’t. As a sponsor of different school clubs, I have never been contacted by any school to verify student claims.</p>
<p>Plagiarism is a problem but im sure the admission officials will have to determine whether something is really plagiarism or not like if how two people write on how they were the lead role in their respective school plays or something. or how they were the star athlete of their sport. </p>
<p>A bigger concern would be shadow writing. Sometimes people have too much help on their essays and there is no way to track it sometimes.</p>
<p>Plagiarism is ■■■■■■■■, even if it’s fine written, it won’t necessarily help an applicant, because it depends on his/her positioning effort. In fact, it can contradict other parts of the application since it won’t come together as a cohesive whole. Seldomly though, it’ll help.</p>
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I agree. The line between proofreading/editing/actual writing is very vague, indeed.</p>