<p>I’ve read interviews with admissions reps who admit that regardless of what they want you to think, the truth is that in reality they can’t always tell the difference. For one thing, as many here have pointed out, it is known and accepted that kids are encouraged to get help editing and polishing their essays. So while reps may publicly imply that they can compare answers on SAT writing section and judge the consistency to other short answers within the application, that is not always going to be the case. That’s because the SAT essay is the result of a prompt under strict time pressure can be drastically different from one that is on a topic of great personal meaning and/or one that has been planned and edited for weeks. On the other hand, it is going to raise some questions if someone who never got more than a B- in standard English class suddenly writes an essay worthy of a prize in literature. Anything to an extreme is going to be questionable, of course - but lots of wiggle room left for those who throw ethics to the wind.</p>
<p>The good news is that I’ve heard is that it’s not so much a polished piece of writing that impresses an admissions committee as an essay that reveals something about a student and what is meaningful to him/her - something that reflects on the way he or she thinks and/or looks at the world. The funny thing is that many kids (not all, certainly) have a far fresher and original approach to that than parents, even if the parent has better technical writing skills. In other words, the parent’s version of an essay may be more polished, but that doesn’t necessarily give a kid the advantage they imagine, either.</p>
<p>I too have heard multiple admissions officers say you should get some feedback on the essays. They also all say it should sound like you. My impression is that the essay is not used as a writing sample, it’s used to get an idea of the personality of the kid to make them seem less like a bunch of statistics.</p>
<p>My younger son has a string of B’s in English - he doesn’t like analyzing literature. But he’s a pretty decent writer - his history teachers love him and he’s got a good ear for dialog. His SAT essays so far have been pretty mediocre.</p>
<p>I’m too tired to write my kid’s essays. Some of us have real jobs. :-)</p>
<p>I just can’t imagine that the essays matter that much, even for the tippy top schools. Has anyone actually heard of an essay being the tipping point for a kid? Admissions committees have to know that half of the kids out there aren’t writing them themselves…</p>
<p>I certainly see that in my son’s essays so far. They’re full of the stylistic mistakes that young people make due to lack of writing experience, but also full of interesting imagery and force that I have a hard time mustering these days.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wonder the same thing. But in my son’s case, he’s not just going for admission, but rather hoping to be considered for competitive scholarships, so he’s hoping a good essay will grab someone’s attention.</p>
<p>I know sometimes parents don’t know when to stop. My friends neighbor is a teacher and she helped her daughter quite often in school with papers. I suppose if the SAT writing counted at the time or if her college had a writing test for placement, it might have been noted, but it wasn’t. What really made my mouth drop was that she emails her mom papers she getting behind on, or asks her to edit them or finish them. I know you can get help at a writing center, but they usually don’t write them. At some point, this will have to end and her daughter will have to not have the safety net.
It can get very involved if you let it.</p>
<p>I used to think that any experienced admissions officer could quickly smell a rat with essays written by parents or, worse, “college counselors.” Then late last spring I had the jarring experience of reading a movie review my son had done for his school newspaper. It wasn’t good, it was exceptional. In fact, it was so good that I confess I started excerpting some particularly good phrases and sentences and googling them, concerned that I would find that he had plagiarized the review. (This was a popular movie and had reviews all over the place.) To my horror I found a match. But the horror was quickly replaced with relief when I realized the match was actually his school newspaper, which was on line. (Whew!) </p>
<p>Now he’s in the process of writing his college essays. He’s applying to one school that requires three or four different essays, with different prompts. Last night he showed me one of the essays (“it’s just a rough draft, Pop”) and I was amazed again. Clear, direct, interesting, cogent, not at all hackneyed. All I could say was “good draft.”</p>
<p>This was my own son, and I was initially skeptical about his writing. If I was an admissions counselor, I might very well think these pieces were not written by a student. But clearly some kids just have the knack, and I expect that every experienced admissions officer knows it, more so than I did. So I don’t see what they can do but take it on faith that what they are reading is the students’ own product, and hope that any rats out there are few and far between.</p>
<p>The title of this thread made me sick. NO…I did not write my kids’ essays. The essays had to be in THEIR voice, not mine. They were going to college, not me. I did proofread for them but that was it.</p>
<p>I confess I corrected my kids’ writing. But only in early elementary school.
I only read my son’s essays when he clean up his room and threw into trash bags before he left home for college.</p>
<p>Essays could not be more important for kids applying to highly selective schools. These kids have such similar stats and ECs, the essays and recs are what’s left to differentiate them.</p>
<p>I have not heard parents admitting to writing the essays, but no one hesitates to admit the hired an essay consultant in my neck of the woods.</p>
<p>Writing your kid’s college essays is just plain unethical and WRONG. The college wants to see the kid’s writing. I can’t imagine how anyone is justifying this to themselves. Do they do their kid’s homework too?</p>
<p>D wrote one essay, hated it, changed her topic completely and wrote a second essay. She took that one to her English teacher, who made many suggestions - some of which she took and some of which she chose to ignore. Then I made suggestions, again she took some but not others. Then her brother looked it over, and found a spelling error and suggested 2 phrases be re-worded - she agreed with one, skipped the other. The essay is done and submitted, it’s her ideas, and her words. </p>
<p>I do not think it is unethical to have someone else review/edit your essays. Don’t most people have papers proof-read before submitting or publishing them?</p>
<p>A woman whom I dearly love does this, too. When her daughter took a couple of summer courses at an Ivy last year, her daughter would call home crying (hysterically), needing lots of help with her writing. Mom is quite a writer and would help a ton with her essays.</p>
<p>Mom also committed a little postal fraud; she metered an envelope in her office for a prestigious scholarship program and daughter didn’t put it in the mail until 2 days later, which was 2 days past the deadline date. Daughter was too stressed and had too much on her plate to get it done on time.</p>
<p>As a student, I’m sort of terrified that adcoms will think my parents wrote my essays. I’ve always been sort of advanced in this sort of expression, eg: I started speaking in full sentences when I was one. From a young age, I enjoyed perusing the dictionary and reading grammar books. I’ve read articles about this phenomenon and one thing they commonly say is that if adcoms see semicolons, they assume a parent wrote it. I love semicolons! They’re so useful. Once, one of my teachers read part of one of my college essays to my class (I really, really would rather that she hadn’t, but I couldn’t stop her) and most of my classmates said that they didn’t know people our age could write like that. So, I’m hoping this a rare enough thing that no adcom would assume it and that those articles are just hyperbolizing.</p>
<p>But at what point does any essay that has been vetted by another person cease to be “the student’s own voice”? And where does one draw that elusive line? If a parent or consultant is doing anything beyond checking for spelling and typos–editing for structure, style, vocabulary (to say nothing having input on the choice of topic)–at some point doesn’t the essay become the parent’s/consultant’s work, or at least a collaboration? I think this is a very hard line to draw, and one person’s “looking it over” is surely another’s rewrite. (Hence the parents who confessed to OP could be doing a variety of things that they call “writing” the children’s essays and others would call mere editing.) Suppose I look at my child’s essay and see that she has neglected to provide sufficient support for her thesis? Clearly, she is showing weakness in both thinking and writing. If I point out this problem and suggest how it can be corrected, I am certainly injecting my own thinking and writing into the piece. Yet most here would see this as completely acceptable. Perhaps we can agree then that essays are useless as writing samples. But if their purpose is merely to reveal something interesting about the applicant, why are parents and consultants helping to select essay topics, why are students agonizing over multiple drafts for months, and why are parents/consultants doing more than basic proofreading? The more I think about all this, the more absurd it gets…</p>
<p>MommaJ - Think about our income tax return form. It all depends on honesty of individuals. Some people take advantage of the loopholes, some people don’t.</p>
<p>MommaJ 's comment about how the failure to adequately support a thesis may demonstrate a weakness in thinking–not in just writing–gets at the crux of the matter IMO. Isn’t there a difference between a student who properly supports his thesis without need of a reminder or assistance, and one who doesn’t? The former is likely to be more careful and detail-oriented, for example. He is also capable of the intellectual task of clearly articulating his thoughts so they may be understood by a another person who doesn’t share them. In addition, he demonstrates that he not only understands the components of a logical and strong argument but can construct one by himself. Frankly, he may be more intelligent overall than the latter student. But once other people start giving input, the waters are muddied. </p>
<p>I have a special needs child. She is an excellent reader and thus has a decent working vocabulary. She is also a great speller and does not typically make grammatical errors. Her individual sentences are quite nice. However, what she often can’t do is construct a logical progression with those sentences. For example, she may fail to introduce her topic, or draw a conclusion. She often assumes that what she knows, everyone knows and doesn’t bother to explain what needs explaining. This is not a weakness in her writing abillity, it’s a cognitive deficit. Anyone editing her essay to re-order ideas or introduce transitions would likely mask that fact. Now in her case, of course, other parts of her application would reveal her disability. But MommaJ is on target here.</p>
<p>Yes. The admission director of Caltech told this:
Every year, after the application deadline is over, some parents called his office and said their sons and daughters submitted the wrong essays and wondered he would allow them to resubmit. He said he knew what these parents were up to and he pretended to play dumb. He asked them why the kids sent the wrong essays. The parents went on to find ways to explain and he was smiling to himself. Finally he told the parents that he already read the essays and there were nothing wrong with them.
The honest sons and daughters only let their parents read the essays after they sent them. The parents thought their children may lose the admission chance because the essays had not been corrected by them. And some kids of these parents were actually admitted.</p>
<p>I am a firm believer in the essay undergoing a “second set of eyes” and a few neutral, global comments - but I am actually truly horrified that parents would write a college essay considering this is the chance the student has to let their personality shine through (won’t even start in on ethics). My D (completely unbiased opinion) is an extraordinary writer so there were no worries there but S … well suffice it to say the essay he submitted for a very competitive high school application was in bullet form - according to him a much more efficient way to deliver information. When he gets rejected we will chalk it up to experience I thought - well silly me - he got accepted! Thankfully by the time he got to the college essays they were in essay form - albeit brief and to the point.</p>
MommaJ, excellent points! A private college counselor admits to helping clients with “MULTIPLE DRAFTS of MULTIPLE essays” and another poster writes that a college counselor dictated the topic of her child’s essays. idad tells us of the school with the committee that reviews all essays. If an essay has to undergo multiple rewrites or be seen by multiple persons, then the student’s voice is being compromised. It is ridiculous.</p>
<p>I am not surprised by this as I have a co-worker who is “making sure” her child will be Valedictorian. It really appalls me that this is where we are today in this society. I won’t even start to step onto my soapbox but this really does bother me as a parent AND as a member of society.</p>