<p>This is a quotes from our local newspaper In an age when students can purchase essays online, deans are concerned with the authenticity of samples they receive with applications. </p>
<p>What do colleges go about this problem?</p>
<p>They now can compare the essay to the writing part of the new SAT I. </p>
<p>If the essay seems much better than the students' scores and accomplishments in English classes, then the college may assume that the essay was plagiarized or professionally written, and the college may reject the student.</p>
<p>They can usually tell based on the other writing samples in the app(short questions), or if a student recieved all Bs in English writing and has an A plus essay or if the essay sounds like an adults voice. This might alert them to look a little further</p>
<p>Northstar, that's a bit scary. I know I am a terrible test-taker, but I have never done horriblly on my English essays. I know grammar.</p>
<p>However, I did score reasonably well on the writing (English) section on the SAT and ACT. I suck horribly on multiple choice though.</p>
<p>"What do colleges go about this problem?"</p>
<p>The answer is rather simple: probably nothing. </p>
<p>As far as the SAT essay providing a yardstick for the application essays, there ought to be a MOUNTAIN of evidence for a red flag to be raised. </p>
<p>First, the essays are such different exercises that there is hardly a relevance between the two types. Then, so far, VERY FEW colleges have endorsed the value of the controversial SAT essay, even for the most limited uses. </p>
<p>My personal view is that the "control" part of the essay is a bunch of baloney which is mostly repeated by people who do not really understand the differences between the 25 minutes essay and the polished and edited personal essays. The integrity of the scoring and the inherent value of the essay has been decried by almost every member of any English faculty. There was hardly a whisper about the former SAT II Writing being used as a "control" measure, so why would this become true when the integrity of the scoring is much more in dispute with the SAT Reasoning Test. </p>
<p>Please tell me how MIT could possibly compare the application essays fully knowing that the SAT essay has been ridiculed by their senior faculty member on the subject of Writing ? </p>
<p>While the essays can be polished and edited ad nauseam, other items are equally subject to embellishment and outright cheating. The list ranging from entirely fabricated EC to dishonest letter of recommendations or inflated grades is virtually endless. If the colleges were truly interested in fettering cheating in applications, a focus on the other elements would be immensely more fruitful. </p>
<p>In the end, the only element that is left is the expected honesty of the applicants. In other words, it should be the american system at its finest.</p>
<p>PS Some of the discussions about Intel finalists at <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=39501%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=39501</a>
speak volume about the level of parental participation in EC. It makes the occasional editing of an essay seems trivial.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I can't imagine how anyone in their right mind can compare an SAT essay written in a panic to a carefully thought-out piece written over days or weeks and perhaps even reviewed by a Language Arts teacher. </p>
<p>I write for three different publications and in each my voice and tone vary. I never sound the same.</p>
<p>No offense northstar if harvard is doing that it's a scary thought ;) The obvious thing would be a red flag, but comparison to SAT writing is out of the ballpark! You'd be suprised, you thought that cheating technology is amazing? Think again. At my school the faculty room has a machine hooked up to some internet database, you slip in an essay, and it can tell you if its forged. If my school has it, I'm pretty sure a fine college would too</p>
<p>"Sorry, but I can't imagine how anyone in their right mind can compare an SAT essay written in a panic to a carefully thought-out piece written over days or weeks and perhaps even reviewed by a Language Arts teacher. "</p>
<p>It would be easy to compare things. An excellent writer who has good grammatical skills would be able to produce a solid essay in 20 minutes. The essay would not have, for instance, egregious grammatical mistakes nor would it be written subject verb, subject verb.</p>
<p>Of course, it would lack the elegance of an essay that the writer had more time to produce, but the essay still would be well written.</p>
<p>A student with an SAT verbal of 550, a wooden, grammatical errors-filled essay, and no obvious interest in reading or writing is very unlikely to produce a remarkably wonderful college essay. If a student did send such an essay, the college would likely suspect that the student had plagiarized or had used an editor who had drastically revised their original essay.</p>
<p>Doesn't take much to figure out something like that.</p>
<p>Well, if the person gets Cs in English and turns in a terrific paper, there is a discrepancy. I don't think that they compare the SAT writing quality to the application essay because the student has a lot more time for the application. High school grades are a different matter.</p>
<p>SATs are a horrible indicator- I write very well off the cuff- I rarely write a second draft for anything. But I've always known people who couldn't write first drafts to save their lives, but who could, with time and editing, craft a perfectly comparable essay.</p>
<p>That's like saying a student must've cheated in school if their math grade is significantly better than their SAT score in math.</p>
<p>My D was required to turn in a graded sample of her writing. That would provide a comparison.</p>
<p>You can do those internet runs for plagiarism. Though you could make a comparison to the written SAT, that does not seem a valid comparison because of the conditions under which the SAT is done. Some administrators say that they will compare the long essay to required short essays because they suspect that the short essay is actually often one the student does on his own even if he has help with the long one. Nevertheless, the plain fact is that there is usually not much a college can do to determine whether the student actually did the main essay. Some colleges have gone to requiring, either instead of or in addition to an essay, that the student submit a copy of an actual graded paper from high school. Many colleges either do not require the essay or use it simply to learn some personal info about the applicant that might not otherwise appear on the app. Administrators from those colleges that require and consider the long essay to be very important (many of your high ranked) have often whined about their concern over ghost written essays and that it is difficult to tell whether one is. My personal response to that is Duh!? You, college administrators, created the situation by requiring and relying heavily on essays and you have the power to do away with the problem by eliminating the essay requirement, requiring instead a graded paper, or giving the essay no purpose except to provide personal information that the student wants to provide that does not otherwise appear on the app (which many colleges have done).</p>
<p>As I mentioned, if a student is an excellent writer, of course, their first draft won't look as good as it would look if they had lots of time to write and revise. Their first draft, however, won't be filled with horrible grammatical errors and the writing won't sound like it was written by a person with no appreciation of voice or structure.</p>
<p>I have taught writing. I know that excellent writers still produce excellent writing on timed test. It won't be as polished as it would be if they had plenty of time to think and revise, but it still will be well above what less talented people produce in the same time frame. There also would be a big difference between the timed essays produced by the top writers and those produced by people with weak skills.</p>
<p>Remember that with the new SAT, colleges can read students' essays. Thus, colleges would also be able to compare the essays done by students with a wide range of writing talent and skills.</p>
<p>One can't make the comparison with SAT math and their math grades, etc. It's easy to get a low SAT score because one misnumbered the questions or ran out of time.</p>
<p>Running out of time would not account for a person writing an essay that's filled with major grammatical errors like, "She walk the dog yesterday and then she would have went out of town but a criminal had stealed her purse."</p>
<p>Northstarmom, I am a writer by trade, having written a best selling book and numerous articles.</p>
<p>I can tell you that my first drafts, especially if typed, usually have grammatical errors, probably some spelling errors, and sometimes weakly conveyed ideas. Maybe there are writers who produce finished work on the first draft;however, I am not one of them.
Even good, quick writers usually don't have the same creative flair in essays that are rushed when compared to their normal work product.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that having to craft an essay in a short period of time does not necessarily produce good work even for good writers. Maybe I am an anomaly.</p>
<p>I have advocated for some time using ETS or ACT to administer the college essay. The topics would be UChicago-esque, the writing sample would be ungraded thus minimizing the cost to students.</p>
<p>I suspect that college adcoms would be much more interested in the quality of thought and organization in these essays and give students some slack for spelling and grammatical errors.</p>
<p>While there is something to say in favor of the current system which allows students time to rewrite and craft a more polished essay, it also provides too many opportunities for parents, friends, teachers and professional admissions counselors to do some or all of the polishing for them. As an example, I was shocked by the number of parents who admitted in this forum that they assissted their students in hs writing assignments. I suspect that many of these parents would do the same, helping their children to "craft" their college essay.</p>
<p>The other advantage is that our students would only need to write one major application essay and be over and done with it in 2 or 3 hours. And if they felt they "blew it" first time they could always take it a second time with different topics of course.</p>
<p>Taxguy,
I am an award-winning writer, and also have taught journalism, including to students who ended up winning national awards for their writing.</p>
<p>I am not at all saying that first drafts would be grammatically perfect. Of course people will make some mistakes on a first draft. However, I'd bet $ that an excellent writer's first drafts would not contain the kind of egregious errors that I put in the sample on my last post. </p>
<p>While we're on this general subject, an interview also can be a way of sniffing out whose essays were either plagiarized or got so much editing by an outside person that the essays were not really the student's work.</p>
<p>For instance, when I interviewed an applicant to my alma mater, I asked the student about his favorite book. He described a well known classic (that had been assigned for class), and when I asked him what he enjoyed about it, the student simply told me the entire story (which was akin to telling me the story of Macbeth, something that most educated people know).</p>
<p>When I asked him about what he enjoyed about another book that he said he had read for fun, all he could say was that he identified with the main character. He literally answered my question with one sentence and when I tried to draw him out, had nothing else to say. The student was highly verbal, was a student leader, etc., so there was no indication that he was frozen in fear during the interview.</p>
<p>The student showed me the essay that he had written for college. It was a gorgeous piece of writing, filled with well used, sophisticated writing devices and impressive insights. It sounded absolutely nothing like him, and I could tell that someone had given the student so much help that the essay didn't really reflect his abilities or thinking.</p>
<p>In addition, the student's SAT verbal was in the upper 500s. </p>
<p>This was in the days before the new SAT I. However, with the new SAT I, colleges will have even more evidence that the writing that such students submit in their official application essays does not reflect the students' skills.</p>
<p>My daughter finds it difficult to communicate her thoughts verbally and even sounds awkward at times. She is, however, an awesome communicator on paper and a wonderfully funny and clever writer. She is in her final year of law school. I hope you're not questioning a person's communication skills on simply an interview because you think the interviewee is not uncomfortable in the situation.</p>
<p>I know the difference between a student who is shy, yet has insightful ideas, and a student who is not communicating insightful ideas because they lack deep insight into things.</p>
<p>There's a big difference between a person who simply tells a book's plot when asked what they liked about a book, and a person who has to think a while before describing insightfully what they liked about their favorite book.</p>
<p>The person whom I was referring to was not awkward, etc. They simply were shallow. There are many colleges that would be a good fit for that individual, but not my Ivy, particularly when the person wanted to be an English major.</p>
<p>ColumbiaMom, I agree that good writing skills do not necessarily correlate with good speaking or interviewing skills. When I attended some of the writer's conferences and met some top notch, well- known writers, such as Covey, Kiyosaki etc. I was aghast at their speaking skills. Many were incoherent, used foul language, had no audience rapport etc. </p>
<p>Although I do believe that SAT scores can have some correlation with writing skills, the operative word is "some." My daughter is a great example of a lack of correlation. She has crafted some terrific creative work. However, it takes her a long time to produce a finished piece: perhaps too long! She also is a slower reader than I would like. Thus, she can't seem to finish any verbal section of the SAT. I would, thus, be willing to bet that her SAT written essay wasn't up to her normal standards due to the limited time that she had. I do wonder how many other top kids get shafted simply due to the timed conditions of the test.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, You may be correct in noting that good writers would not normally have egregiously written sentences as noted in your sample. However, not making an egregious mistake is a far cry from being able to craft a good essay in a limited time frame in my humble opinion. :)</p>
<p>"hus, she can't seem to finish any verbal section of the SAT. I would, thus, be willing to bet that her SAT written essay wasn't up to her normal standards due to the limited time that she had."</p>
<p>I am sure that no students' SAT written essay is up to their normal standards. How could it be? No one's optimal writing is produced under stressful test conditions.</p>
<p>However, if one thinks about what colleges require of their students, students need to be able to produce acceptable essays under testing conditions since particularly with the top colleges, the exams will be essay exams. </p>
<p>Students who literally can't get their thoughts together to produce acceptable SAT I essays are unlikely to be able to do well in college essay exams. </p>
<p>" She also is a slower reader than I would like."</p>
<p>Have you considered getting her a course in speed reading? My younger S also was a very slow reader. This was because he read everything as if he was reading math problems. He thought that every single detail counted. </p>
<p>A few sessions with a reading tutor helped him learn how to skim, and he also learned when skimming is appropriate. </p>
<p>Given the large volume of reading that many colleges require, slow readers will be at a big disadvantage.</p>
<p>In addition, perhaps your D could benefit from a course or tutor who could teach her how to effectively take the SAT. Knowing how to pace yourself on that exam is very important and can be easily learned. I'm sure that there also are good tips that she could get about how to approach the essay so as to optimize her score and writing sample.</p>