Help with stubborn kid and essays

Parents Forum
1

I’m hoping the wise parents on this forum can help me come up with a way to best help my very stubborn daughter. She’s a junior and had some essays due this week for a scholarship application and summer program application. She’s a smart kid with high grades and test scores, but is not the strongest writer/communicator. Our problem is that she refused to accept any advice or even editing on her essays because she feels like, if she does, the work “won’t be hers”.

I admire her determination to not let someone else tell her what to say, but pointed out to her that editing is just the process of making sure what she wants to say is said as clearly as possible. I keep arguing that every writer has someone else proofread their work and that even J.K. Rowling (she’s a big Harry Potter fan) accepted editing. She finally let my husband read one of her essays last night. My husband said the essay was not very good, but knowing there wasn’t time for many changes and that she wouldn’t accept them anyway, he told her it was fine and just made a couple of suggestions. She submitted those applications last night and we don’t know whether or not she made the small changes he suggested.

It’s too late to do anything about those applications now, but looking ahead to college applications, I really want to somehow convince this kid to let someone help her with her essays. Her school has a writing center and I begged her to go there for help with the essays this week. She wouldn’t do that, so I’m afraid she won’t use that service for her college essays either. If she was a gifted writer, I’d still be frustrated with her stubbornness, but wouldn’t be quite as worried that she was sabotaging herself. As it is, I’m afraid her sense of honor or whatever it is that makes her feel like she can’t accept help is going to really hurt her on college applications.

Has anyone else ever run into this problem? Do any of you think she’s right and that I should let it go and let her just do her best on her own? Thanks for any advice you can share -

2

I can understand your concern. Bottom line: you and she have a lot more leeway than you may think to allow her to write her own essays.

My feeling is that parents who are doing their best by their kids and who care so deeply, can’t help but get so over-excited about how hard it is to get into college. Unless she’s aiming for a Top 20-40 USN&WR ranked school, then she’s going to find a nice school somewhere. Of course the stakes go up if you’re seeking merit aid or the like, or if you are seeking the top 20 schools.

Rest assured that there are about 2000 solid schools that are dying to have your daughter as part of their community. About 70% of colleges do not fill each year in the USA. Many of them are quite good schools. There’s a thread on this forum each May that lists the schools that did not fill each year. Basically that means that virtually any student with their minimum-required stats will gain access to 70% of schools.

Strategies I might employ are to ask her to print out her essay and hand it to her peers and to her favorite teacher. That gets you guys out of her nascent independent world and she can pull in her friends, who are her confidantes about more than just essays, I’m sure. They should catch the most awful errors and then also she might just let you guys take a look at the essays, when she feels they are ready for you to look at. Schools actually do want to hear the voice of the student.

That should help you relax a little. She’s going to get into a college! She will like her college and so will you! In all likelihood.

3

I found it helpful to have a third party (non-parent) review the essay. For example, if your D has a trusted English teacher your D could work on her college essay over the summer and ask that teacher to help her edit in the fall of her senior year. This would be advantageous first in that it would give your D an earlier deadline to have the essay done and second, for better or worse, sometimes if advice/edits come from someone other than a parent it is received more openly.

4

A good editor won’t change her message but will help her find her own words. That is what you need to convey to her. For example, “The transition between the fourth and fifth paragraph is weak; how do you think you need to change it to better reflect what you’re trying to say?” Or “This sentence in paragraph seven is the same as this sentence in paragraph three. Can you delete one of them or find another way to express your thought?” The work is still hers; she just had a little help finding her written voice. I’m sure an English or communications teacher will know how to help her.

5

Advice about content generally isn’t needed (unless it’s such a controversial topic, then maybe) but proofreading is extremely important and she should be able to get that from an English teacher. Does her HS have any kind of program for seniors - for example, D’s HS had a one week college essay class over the summer after junior year - i think it was 4 mornings in a row - they offered a few different dates so you could find one that worked - and kids felt motivated to get their essays done early. They focused on the common app questions.

6

From the perspective a student, see this thread.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1942546-should-i-just-give-up-applying.html

While you can’t be compared with the parent in that thread who won’t let the student write or submit his own essays, is it possible that you may be underestimating your daughter’s writing abilities? From a past thread, I see her ACT was a 34 (10 on the essay, 36R and 35E). That would indicate that her writing brought her ELA score down a bit, but a 10 still puts her in approximately the 98th percentile for writing. And she’s only a junior.

I’m not suggesting that proof reading wouldn’t be helpful (and smart), but from your description here, I would have expected her score to be much lower. When you describe her as not being a strong/gifted writer with an essay that your H said wasn’t very good, is it her sentence structure that makes you think this? Grammatical errors? Flow? Subject matter?

Keep in mind that what at least some parents think is a strong, well-written essay vs. what colleges are looking for can be two different things. You say she has high grades. With a high GPA combined with a 34 ACT and good essays (which I think a score of 10 on the ACT would indicate she’s very capable of) she will be in good shape. I wouldn’t worry too much.

7

What does your HS do? Ours had a one-day essay writing workshop in the fall. This was great but only if your kid signed up for it AND had their essay completed by the date. English teachers might be of help, depending on the teacher. She may change her tune by the summer. If not, if she would agree, and if she is aiming for a tiptop college, I might actually hire someone to review and edit the essay. I didn’t do that for my kids, but they let us act as copy editors and were not aiming to the top.

8

Thanks for the advice all. I think I just needed to vent a bit. :slight_smile: She has good grades and scores, so I’m sure she’ll be fine in the long run even if her essays aren’t as good as the rest of her application. Hopefully, I can convince her to show the essays to a teacher as happy1 and tutumom suggest. She might have done that with these recent essays if she hadn’t had the quick deadline after the holiday break.

Good point about the special class, Fishnlines29. I think her school does something similar, so that might force her to accept feedback whether she wants to or not. As with everything else when it comes to teenagers, if she sees her friends doing it, she’ll realize it’s okay to do. Thanks again for your thoughts!

9

I echo the other comments here. Get her a qualified counselor or consultant to review her essays, and no this shouldn’t be considered optional.

10

Have her read “Sh i tt y First Drafts” by Anne Lamott. It’s a humorous article that also helps students realize that even professional authors and writers struggle with writing, that it takes a lot of work, and that it’s better to get something out there and start.

My first-year writing students loved it last semester and it became one of our favorite activities (“take fifteen minutes and write a sh i tt y first draft! I’ll do it too because we all have rough starts!”)

ETA: sorry for using spaces to get around the asterisk thing for swearing, but it’s a title and a classroom heuristic, darn it!

11

I haven’t been able to come back to the forum until just now, but thanks again for the additional suggestions. I agree that my husband and I might not be good at recognizing what is good writing for a junior in high school and might be underestimating her writing. It’s just never been her strongest area and I think she has a hard time with flow and word choice - my husband said she repeated the same phrase several times within a 500 word essay. But, at least it won’t read like a counselor wrote it! I love the idea of the first drafts book, harvestmoon. I’ll definitely get her that!

12

I would be proud of her, honestly. I am sure she is well aware of the kinds of coaching others are getting. I think you have done a great job raising a kid with a moral center. Colleges will know she wrote it, a plus.

My personal opinion is that essays no longer matter that much, because admissions people know that few totally write their own (except your daughter). I think a really really bad essay can harm an applicant, but more because of content that is offensive, that kind of thing. But an okay so so essay, in my opinion (others may disagree) doesn’t have much of an effect either way.

On the other hand, having the autonomy and ethical approach she wants may do a lot for her personally.

13

Aw - thanks so much for that compmom! I am proud of her and you’re right that her strong moral center will serve her well in the long run - even if it’s frustrating me right now in this one way. :slight_smile:

14

BTW, at least when my son applied, the Tufts application said explicitly you should get someone to look over your essay and make sure it sounded like you before you sent it off to them. They ask enough weird questions at Tufts (or at least did then), that I think they DO care about essays. That said, I think it’s rare that an essay makes much of a difference. I know my older son wrote a “pretty good for an engineer” essay and got into some top-notch schools, despite the less than perfect essay. Younger son’s essays were much better, and I think may have pushed him over the edge at some schools. He had iffier grades and scores than older brother and did better than we expected, getting into some real reach schools.

15

@Emmycat it’s a very short article and is actually available as a PDF online! :slight_smile:

16

@Emmycat Your daughter sounds so much like mine -huge Harry Potter fan too. I eventually wore her down with letting me do some editing/suggesting but she wanted it to be her voice (understandably). Luckily she wants to be an English major and is a good writer, but there were definitely some essays that weren’t the best. I think over time she realized that other kids have parents/teachers etc. do some editing and she had a couple of language arts teachers look at her main common app essay. Unfortunately with so many students, they were not always the best about getting back to her. One thing that was helpful was having her look at the book, Fiske Real College Essays that Work, just to get some ideas of what topics people choose and what colleges might be looking for.
My D still has some essays to do for scholarships but all applications are done! Hooray!

17

Been there with gifted son. Stubborn/strong willed/independent… (takes after both parents). Never did see any of those essays or applications- he has long graduated from college by now (yes I’m still on CC). You’re lucky she’s still a HS junior. Time for her to discuss this sort of thing with her guidance counselor. Having a professional tell her it is a good idea to have a third party, professional, look at her essays et al works far better than anything a parent can say. Good luck. Son refused to apply to some schools et al regardless of our advice. Oh, and deadlines- he got one application in by midnight California time, sigh (much later for us on a school night), later it was apparent he wasn’t that excited about that school. Gotta love those teenage brains.

18

I have a D20 who is not the strongest writer. What I found is encouraging her to read her essays aloud. She can do this in front of someone, or by herself. She catches a lot of stuff when she hears herself read. But, in addition, I second what a lot of people above are saying about an independent 3rd party.

19

@emmycat, your description of your D sounds exactly like my S who is also a junior. Writing is his weakest area but I think I magnify that “weakness” because he’s otherwise an exceptional student. He’s refused help on his application essays for summer programs and ECs, and of course will never accept help for regular writing assignments for school. I know that plenty of parents would insist on seeing the essays before submission but I am not one of them. Nor will I insist that he gets help from a teacher or counselor. I will definitely encourage him to have an adult look at his college essays, using the logic already mentioned that there’s nothing wrong with having a second set of eyes looking for grammar and spelling mistakes. But I will not demand that he shows me his essays or goes to another adult. I’ll make sure he has the tools he needs to make an informed choice about college essays, but it will be up to him to decide how to proceed.

20

I do.

I think you should back off and allow your daughter to take ownership of the essay process.

Let her know (as you already have a zillion times) that you are ready and willing to help if asked… but then leave it at that.

The essays aren’t that important for college admissions.

A dynamite essay can be the element that makes an application come to life and win over an adcom – but those kind of essays are rare. (The fact that they are rare is what makes them special).

For the rest it is just something an overworked reader scans through very quickly while reviewing the rest of the app – the reader is looking to see whether the essay gives any information or insight about the applicant beyond what is apparent from the other data — but if it’s not there, it doesn’t really count against the application unless a student writes something off-putting, creepy or offensive.

Here’s the problem:

It probably wasn’t the first time in her life that her dad has read her essays, and she probably figured out long ago that handing the essay to a parent leads to a barrage of criticism and requested changes. It is not the parent’s job to opine on whether the essay is good or not – unless the student asks an opinion.

I’ve been around CC and the whole college app thing a lot of years now and read a lot of essays – and more often than not, well-meaning parents and English teacher have a talent for sucking the life and the charm out of essays produced by teenagers. So it becomes just one more lifeless essay about a hackneyed topic that causes the admissions reader’s eyes to glaze over.

Sometimes errors in grammar and punctuation are exactly the thing that gives a sense of charm to an essay or allows the student’s voice to come out. Not that it is something to do deliberately (that doesn’t work) – but less-than-perfect in a context where it is very clear that it is the student’s own work can make more of an impact than a polished essay that very well could be the product of a committee.

Let your daughter own her college app process to the extent that she wants to. Help guide her to apply to a good array of safety & match level schools. Reaches are fine, too – but your anxiety will be less next year if you know that she’s applied to a few schools where she is pretty much guaranteed admission with her test scores and GPA.

Your daughter’s independent streak will serve her well in college. For one thing, she’s unlikely to ever be accused of plagiarism or cheating.

So chill. Encourage your daughter to focus on her strengths and if writing isn’t one of them, so be it.