<p>You all seem to assume that the kids who participate in this workshop have a significant advantage when it may not. How successful is the average student who attended this workshop? How can you be sure that there aren’t many students admitted to the top schools who wouldn’t need the camp to write good essays?</p>
<p>For some 14,000 is pocket change. For others, paying for a service that requires an additional performance might be a waste. After all, as many Asians know there are plenty of mercenary organizations that can deliver full packages of essays, fake recommendations, upgraded transcripts, and test scores obtained through dubious methods. Those poor and naive Americans are silly to pay and still have to do the work! How silly! </p>
<p>And, if all fails, one can sue …</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215151/Sons-Harvard-rejection-leads-Hong-Kong-parents-suing-professor-paid-2-2m.html”>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215151/Sons-Harvard-rejection-leads-Hong-Kong-parents-suing-professor-paid-2-2m.html</a></p>
<p>I’m not sure why so many people are against this. It’s a fact of life that rich people can pay for what they want in life. It’s been going on for years in college admissions, where they live, the jobs they obtain, the favors they receive in the judicial system. Money talks. It always will. </p>
<p>We can all snicker at parents who would spend 14,000 bucks on something like this. And I’m sure we can all agree that if this outfit is writing a kid’s essay for them, the kid ought to be denied admission to the college, for cheating.</p>
<p>But when the first reaction from a citizen of a free nation is The camp should be shut down immediately, we should all be appalled. And when that reaction comes from someone who says she’s on the admissions committee of a professional school, we should be outraged.</p>
<p>The OP wrote this, which made me laugh:</p>
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<p>I laughed because once when I was sitting in my kids’ pediatrician’s waiting room and struck up a conversation about college applications (lol) with another mom, she told me that she wrote all of her husband’s med school essays because he was a terrible writer and she was an English major.</p>
<p>$14K for a camp is silly. You could have someone rewrite your kids essays just fine for $500. Take the authenttic essay and make it perfect English and what you are supposed to say and so on.</p>
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<p>Actually, what is kind of funny is that anyone who would believe that that is what happens.</p>
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<p>That really is a good point.
There are plenty of students who are incredible writers and could write a terrific and compelling essay without a herculean effort.
Then there are other strong students who may not be nearly as good at writing, or who may go down the cliche road. </p>
<p>My DS bought one of those well regarded essay books (don’t know which one) and he was amazed at what people wrote about and realized that he had to totally re-think his essays. So I can see that if someone has 14k to spend and likes the idea of a concentrated program (vs. dragging out essays for months) that it makes sense.</p>
<p>As the parent of a kid who was working on his last essay on Dec 31, it would have been worth a lot (although not $14,000) to me to have had them all done in a week during the summer. </p>
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<p>You might have a point if the 14,000 is for the sole purpose of rewriting a couple of essays. While a few posts, including the OP, have hinted at the “essay camp” it is either a willful mischaracterization or a gross oversimplification. </p>
<p>Obviously, the paying clients are expecting more than a rewritten stack of essays by ghost writers. It should not be that hard to understand that! </p>
<p>I read the article as well, and thought $14000 was a lot for essays. Even if that is pocket change to certain consumers, it seems that a private essay tutor who could meet with your child entirely one-on-one, in the comfort of your own home, would cost less. Even if it cost the same, I would see that as preferable to a camp with other children to distract both the tutors and one’s own child.</p>
<p>In any case, I find it hard to get upset about these expensive programs when the much more effective - and, I feel, just as unfair - preparation these kids are receiving are the conditions the wealthy stew in for their entire lives. They are more likely to have more books at home, to attend better schools, to have well-educated parents, so on and so forth.</p>
<p>The way I see it the students are not just buying writing instructions but also a piece from Ms Hernadez wisdom and that’s why the price is what it is.
For example let’s say a candidate writes a great essay. An instructor reads it and finds no fault with it. However, a consultant with in depth college experience might be able to tell you that this essay would be great for x college but not so great for y college. Or it might be great for a candidate with different profile but not you. Anyway, I would assume that a price set that high buys you a different kind of advice.</p>
<p>Edit to say that I have absolutely no personal experience since my finances prohibit such consultations. </p>
<p>OP here. I have no problem with the idea that wealthy people can send their kids to better camps and summer “volunteer programs” and hire more tutors. I know there are college counselors in CT and NYC hired while kids are still in elementary school and paid $$$ to recommend to wealthy parents that they sign their kids up for squash, fencing, robotics camp, etc as that will “look good” for college. That is the American way. Those of us on admissions committees are used to this and that is why it is a hook to come from a disadvantaged background. I do alumni interviewing (in wealthy CT for my undergrad, another ivy league place), and though our reports rarely affect admissions, I certainly give a heads up when I meet a perfectly college-groomed kid whose in-person attributes fall short of their on-paper ones. </p>
<p>However, I still have a real problem with this one week college essay writing camp for what seems to amount to be outright cheating and dishonesty in the application process. Writing camp is a fine idea, if it is to teach kids how to write. But is seems to me that the purpose of the camp is to HELP (!?!) the kids write their college essays. And by HELP, I mean write or heavily rewrite their essays. And if they do not help the kids that much, then why are the parents paying 14K? College essays should be done with very little help, at least that is the tacit understanding of those of us who read them. My kid is a truly lucky kid in that he is fortunate enough to have a parent who will provide him with a computer, a quiet room, and a nudge or two to get his essays done. That is his camp and I think that is the only ethical way for him to do his essays. My daughter, a college English major (published in Columbia literary mag, won graduation awards in English), proofreads essays for friends of friends, for free, and she helps with simple punctuation and grammar and she will do no more for him. I do see the golf camp analogy, but I do not think it is quite the same. If the golf camp coach held the kids arms and helped him swing the club in a tourny, that would not be allowed, and I think this camp is closer to that idea.</p>
<p>And to some of you on this board, of course I did not really mean these camps should be shut down. I am an educated person, and with 2 parents who are lawyers, I know there is no legal way to do this. This was written to provoke discussion. There are a few meanies on this board, certainly a minority, but calling for me to lose my job because I do not want to read essays written or heavily rewritten by tutors, highly paid or not, is a bit much. </p>
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<p>I do not think this is the tacit understanding of most applicants, at all. Some high schools, including public ones, hold college app essay writing classes, or actually incorporate essay writing it into the Junior year English class, and they encourage students to have others read and comment on their essays. </p>
<p>Commenting on the same sentence as Bay: maybe four years back, a friend whose children attended a very well-known-on-CC private high school told me about the school’s annual day-long college admissions info session. The school (which does VERY well with admissions) hosted several active adcoms from various highly selective colleges. One of the breakout sessions was a roleplaying game so the parents could see how adcoms evaluate applications. Each small group of parents was given four sample applicants: their Common App, transcript, recommendations and essay. I should note that none of these were actual applications; they were composites that were representative of the kind of applications that the adcoms saw by the thousands each year. The parents were told that they could choose to admit only two of the students. Then the adcoms would say which two they chose to admit, and why.</p>
<p>My friend brought me copies of the packages, and I went through the exercise. One of the things I remember is that it was VERY easy to pick out the essay that’d been written for hire. The language, the approach, many things just didn’t sound like what a student would use, even in the more formal deliberate style of an admissions essay. Making it even more obvious, the student’s other stats (SAT English score, grades, short answers) weren’t in line with the kind of sophisticated writing in the long essay. </p>
<p>Undergrad adcoms are fully aware that applicants may be getting a lot of help on their essays. Experienced ones can often (maybe even nearly always) identify what’s genuine, and what’s not. </p>
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<p>OP, with all due respect, I wonder if you did read some of the comments in this thread. There is indeed a small group of people here who speculate about what is happening at the Applications’ Boot Camp, and insist that is an “essay” camp that costs 14,000 to obtain a stack of essay (reduced in simpler terms.) Others have responded that Michele Hernandez used to participate in this forum and dispelled that speculation in very clear terms. Her organization does NOT write essays for students. In fact, there are plenty of outfits that provide exactly that service for a lot less money (and probably less dependable results.) </p>
<p>As a person who evaluates essays (although in a very distinct context) you should know that one of the key element of a positive UG essay is to maintain the voice of the student who is a teenager. Year after year, and right here on CC, we have been able to see the product of essays that have been “edited” by parents, teachers, and other adults who thought they could help. As much as having adults help with the grammar and (perhaps) the coherence, the end product is often a liveless, stilted, and boring text. </p>
<p>One can safely assume that the clients of Michele Hernandez have helped her keep her pulse on what … works in college admissions. One can speculate about how things have changed since the days of the Wobegon kids, the days described in her early books, the days of Racher Took or Jacques Steinberg, but her company (and others who specialize in the genre) have annual waves of clients who go through the process. This means that her information, albeit restricted to her clients, is timely and directly relevant to a certain type of highly selective school. </p>
<p>In the end, people might profoundly dislike the type of service she sells, or even dislike the person. Some might find the type of service as more evidence of the inequities in our society. And that is understandable, although I for one continue to think that there are more pressing issues to deal with than the services of a small college consulting firm. </p>
<p>You wrote the post to provoke discussions. I think that such discussions might be helped if you were to look at bit deeper at what ABC actually does, and discuss it in a more impartial manner. </p>
<p>For the record, I have offered countless hours of free “help” to many, and really believe in that approach. On the other hand, I think that such position is not incompatible with respecting the people who offer services that respond to the demands of the marketplace. </p>
<p>On a last note, it is good to remember that the admissions’ policies are the product of the … colleges. They define the material they want to see and pretend to be able to identify the “packaged students.” Do you think that this is true? </p>
<p>Perhaps an idea would be to eliminate the college essay requirement. </p>
<p>^^
That was the idea behind adding the essay to the regular SAT, but we know how that worked. Even the essays administered in an official setting are prone to be helped by smart consultants. In the days of the SAT writing, a tutoring company developed an idiot proof system to ace the essay. The students prepared one great essay, memorized it, and simply repeated it … regardless of the prompt. </p>
<p>Here is another reality. It should not be hard at all to write a compelling essay for college admissions. The unfortunate element is that years of education contributed to the darn awful messes produced by your typical students who were told to avoid using the I form and be personal. </p>
<p>This is also why asking a graded HS paper would not be helpful. Another example of the chasm between the product delivered by our K-12 and the expectations of colleges. And why consultants who can read the tea leaves correctly can extract a pound of flesh and more than a fistful of dollars.</p>
<p>Maybe they shouldn’t judge on writing at all if they’re that concerned. But I don’t think they are, because this type of thing is a very small proportion of college applicants, and the impact of these essays is fairly low.</p>
<p>Basically, admissions isn’t perfect. We deal with it. </p>
<p>I understand what the idea was with the SAT, xiggi. What I mean is eliminating it altogether. </p>