<p>My son’s school also plays a big role in its students’ college essays, but not that big. No review panel, and they don’t start in the summer. But they do make college essays a graded assignment in Senior English, so that students get the benefits of a review-and-editing process. I think there may even be peer review, but I’m not sure.</p>
<p>To be honest, even this level of involvement makes me slightly uncomfortable, simply because many applicants don’t have such strong support. I would hate for my son to get someone else’s spot at a good school simply because his essay got a more helpful third-party review. On the other hand, I’m thankful for it.</p>
<p>My kids have never even allowed us to read their essays. The owned their app processes. They do get feedback from each other & peers and I believe they may also seek & sometimes consider advice of faculty.</p>
<p>I think it says a lot about the family dynamic in terms of roles & responsibilities. My kids do what is “their jobs” and we do what is ours. We support them emotionally and provide encouragement and resources but they have never even hinted that they want us or anyone to do what is their responsibility. </p>
<p>On the other hand, they’re not fond of chores and don’t have many of those. <grin> Do notice that S came home much more responsible & will see how long that will last. Maybe it may rub off on D as well?</grin></p>
<p>There was a book about college admissions that came out this summer, written by a former private high school guidance counselor. That school offered a semester long course in writing the college essay, for the first semester of senior year. From the way it sounded there was lots of editing done by the teachers.</p>
<p>My D. brought one of her essays into her English class for “peer” editing and that was the full extent of assistance from the school. A few suggestions from two of her classmates, scrawled into the margins. And her guidance counselor won’t even read her essay, let alone offer suggestions.</p>
<p>So my kid is on her own. But, would I consider writing her essays? Not on your life. This is her college application process and it absolutely needs to be in her voice. My job is limited to hand wringing, hair pulling and gentle encouragement!</p>
<p>My kids really write things I would never think of and have a way of writing that really reflects them. They would be extremely insulted and refuse if anyone offered to write for them.</p>
<p>The important thing we do write is the checks for all the app fees & other things that go with their applications.</p>
<p>The original post (which I suspect may not be authentic) and all the responses just reinforce my belief that it’s ludicrous for colleges to put any emphasis at all on the essay, surely the most unreliable of admission criteria. How is an adcom to evaluate an essay submitted by an ethical student who had no assistance other than Spell-Check versus one that has been worked over by parents, friends, paid advisers and, good grief, has been the subject of an English class? Add to that the nutty trend for dumping or de-emphasizing standardized tests, and the whole process is becoming more akin to voodoo with each passing year. And I don’t believe for a second that all those hundreds (thousands?) of adcoms are so terribly sophisticated at parsing language and style that they can divine which essays are the true work of the applicant and which are not. I’m sure many of those highly paid consultants are quite adept at assuring that their input is not obvious.</p>
<p>I would never do my kids’ work. Their work is their work! Plus, I don’t think I can do a better job than them. I would certainly help them when appropriate.</p>
<p>Various teachers in our high school offered to help. S gave his essays to 2 teachers. One wasn’t much help. Another one gave very good feedback. We also gave him feedback.</p>
<p>He spent several weeks writing 4 essays, 2 of them he revised many times.</p>
<p>It is interesting that at MIT (where my son is now a sophomore), the application was changed this year, such that there no longer is a “long” essay, rather multiple short essays. Many suspect this is an attempt to disallow multiple edits and re-writes (multiple sources) and to create more truly student-written responses. One large public university doesn’t ask for essays any more (their applications are statistics-driven).</p>
<p>MommJ, I think part of my shock in all this is the fact that people are actually admitting doing this. There seems to be a sense, which you’ve captured nicely, that the college admissions process has gotten completely ridiculous, and therefore anything goes. There’s no shame. D told me that she heard two kids confess to having cheated on the SAT. One kid said his score went up 200 points when he did, and so the next sitting the other kid tried it. (They copied off of a smarter neighbor, which of course could have royally backfired if the other student had had a different form of the test.) I was stunned that they would be so bold as to openly admit this! So yeah, the original post was authentic.</p>
<p>Didn’t write my kids essay for several reasons. The ethical questions is foremost, and then so is the reason jnsq gave – that this cripples kids. But more than that, I could not have done anywhere near as good as job as either of them did. They both wrote great, very personal essays with all sorts of details and impressions I knew nothing of.</p>
<p>S wrote his on Star Wars, and you know I don’t know as much about that as he does.
D wrote hers on finding out that there are some environments that welcome dorks, and she called herself a dork. Something I would never think of doing.</p>
<p>And the schools that accepted them liked THEM and felt THEY’D be a good fit. If I’d written them, they might have ended up at a good school for ME.</p>
<p>If other parents do this, it makes me sad for all concerned, but it doesn’t concern me for myself or my kids.</p>
I’m a little puzzled as to why you think this “working over” is an ethical issue. There’s a huge difference between asking someone to write something for you and asking them to read something you’ve written and make comments and suggestions for improving it. The former would get you an F and disciplinary action in any college course; the latter is an integral part of the writing process in many college courses.</p>
<p>Some admissions offices don’t seem to have figured out that it’s unethical for students to seek feedback on their essays, since the Tufts info session advised students to do just that–they were even told specifically to ask for comments from at least two people, one who knows you well and one who hardly knows you at all. </p>
<p>I think this notion that kids should compose their college essays in pristine isolation, without any help or advice, is kind of absurd–unless, of course, that’s how the kid wants to do it. Obviously there’s a question of degree and proportion involved; if it reaches the point where there has been so much editorial intervention that the essay has essentially been rewritten by the parent or teacher, that’s a problem. But I haven’t heard anybody in this thread suggest that they’ve been doing that.</p>
<p>I have no interest in taking over this job, but if I wrote the essays for my son (who has LD and struggles in all subjects) he would assume he was accepted to any of the colleges due to my efforts rather than his own, and would therefore not think he deserved his acceptances. He even balks at my help with addressing the envelopes for his teacher recommendations!</p>
<p>I’m under the impression that almost all large, public universities are statistics-driven. For one to expend the resources to read 30,000 essays would be unusual, although it would be nice.</p>
<p>I gave my kids feedback on their essays. I told them the parts that I thought worked, the parts that didn’t. One had a teacher who weighed in with his opinion too. Both my kids wrote(and re-wrote) their essays. My son went so far to write three different essays on different prompts. He asked me which one I thought was best and I told him.</p>
<p>When we visited one of the schools he was interested in the admissions officer told the kids in the info session point-blank to make sure to get their essays read by parents or teachers or someone else because getting feedback would help them refine their essays.</p>
<p>As long as the ideas and the words are from the student, I don’t see any problem with other people taking a look and giving their opinions, and in some cases mechanical corrections.</p>
<p>I’m also not sure admissions officers could tell if an essay was student written or not. I do a lot of advising as a volunteer now and kids show me their essays all the time. Some of these kids are fabulous writers I would hate to think that just because their writing is polished and interesting an admissions officer might think they didn’t write it! What advice could you give a kid for that? Make is clumsier? Less mature? Egads.</p>
<p>reading our kids’ essays and providing input is a reasonable parental role imho</p>
<p>reminds me of my 3rd child’s kindergarten dinosaur project, his was the only one that looked well, um, like a 5 yr old created it, and for just a moment at the parent’s nite where these masterpieces were showcased, I felt awkward, then of course realized, no, my child had a blast creating and painting his stegosaurus, and he could actually recognize it as his own…also remember my kids’ friend’s parents calling to complain about how much homework the kids had and how hard it was, and I was often unaware, they were shocked but my kids consistently did their own work, I only made sure they did it…</p>
<p>I believe that there are a good amount of parents out there that will write their kid’s college essays for one reason or another. It is extremely dishonest but it will happen. A way to avoid this situation would be to have the applicant submit an essay submitted for school with original markings on it and signed by the teacher. Some schools already use this in order to validate the college essays and it wouldn’t be very difficult. Personally, I don’t believe that my parents could write as well as I can (both doctors with little training in formal writing) so I would never ask them for anything more than an opinion and potential pointers. However, everybody’s different/</p>
<p>I know that in my DSs school several Senior English classes are writing/discussing/editing their college essays in class as part of the curriculum. Contrast that with his AP English IV where not only do they not get the in-class time to write/rewrite essays (of course), but have quite a bit more homework in general. The situations could not be more dissimilar.
I’d love to see the essay done online, with a unknown prompt and a time limit, more like the SAT/ACT. I imagine there would be a world of difference and this would make it more clear who can and can’t write, the student’s voice and unedited thoughts etc., also would eliminate the months-long application process.</p>
<p>The kindergarten dinosaur analogy is funny but doesn’t really apply to college application essays. By the time they are in 12th grade, many students are accomplished writers. Just look at some of the students who post on the parent’s forum- you could not tell just by reading their posts that they are not adults. Do you think their parents write the posts? </p>
<p>I have also been to several info sessions including at least one ivy where the admissions officer specifically recommended soliciting feedback from adults and teachers on essays.</p>
<p>The main value of the essay, IMHO, is to provide the student an opportunity to reveal an aspect of himself or herself that would not otherwise be apparent- a chance to become a real unique person. How well the essay is written is a secondary consideration. I bet there are plenty of technically perfect essays that fall flat, while other, less polished essays move adcoms to tears.</p>
Maybe it may rub off on D as well?</grin></p>