<p>I am applying early decision to college on November 1 and I answered the common app essay topic "Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence." The problem is that I wrote about one of my parents' employees, with whom I have become close (platonic) friends, and who has guided me through rough situations with my verbally abusive and over-bearing parents. I would really like to use this essay, but I am afraid that if my parents read it they will 1. punish me severely and 2. fire my friend / their employee (who needs the job to pay her bills). I know I could just write a new essay but this one means a lot to me, and I think it is quite good - my dean at school said it's one of the best he's ever read.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any ideas about how I can submit the essay but make sure my parents never see it? They are extremely involved in the college process and will insist on reading anything I submit.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help.</p>
<p>p.s. I also just posted this on yahoo answers... just in case any one sees that as well and calls foul play.</p>
<p>If they insist on reading everything, and have access to your passwords, etc. Then you need to write a new essay.</p>
<p>Unless if course you want to write a fake one for your parents, and upload this one when you are away from home.</p>
<p>Contact admissions at the ED school. Explain your situation and ask if you can submit a fake essay via the common app and e-mail them the real one to use. They might have sympathy for you. You never know. If your parents don’t actually go into your common app, but just look at what you give them, you can create more than one version of your common app and move colleges from one version to another. The instructions explain how to do this. Depending on how much they see, it may be possible to create a version with dummy essay that looks as though it was sent, while actually sending other version with a different essay. But you won’t be able to erase the version with the real essay, so it could be dangerous if they ever poke around. While if you can get school to accept an e-mailed essay, you can erase it after sending.</p>
<p>If you are concerned that your parents will access your common app, you need to make it more secure. They do not have a right to your account (and I’m saying this as a parent). You need to set boundaries with them, but be prepared to live with the consequences. They may assume that by blocking access, you have something to hide, and they may become less cooperative.</p>
<p>The solution of sending it by hard copy or email may work for one school, but are you planning to use a different essay for your other schools? If not, you would need to make such an arrangement for every school - restricting access to your account is the better option in that case. Just be aware if they have access to your email account, they may be able to reset your common app password and get access - you need to secure everything. Since you don’t have 100% trust between you and your parents, this should be done regardless.</p>
<p>I have a less convoluted plan. Get everything else done first, then while they aren’t home one day (or somewhere else) put in the essay and submit the Common App there. If you want, wait until 2 days or so before the 1st so it is “crunch time” and say you HAD to submit it without them proofreading because you HAD to get it in on time. Hopefully they’d understand that.</p>
<p>Normally I wouldn’t really be for this kind of thing (I.e. if someone was hiding an essay about something they didn’t want their parents to know about for a trivial reason, or something that was truly bad, etc.) but this is a special case.</p>
<p>Contact admissions officers, who can probably let you mail the essay in instead.</p>
<p>Thank you, everyone, for all of your suggestions… There are a lot of good ones. I’ll have to think it all over and figure out how to proceed. </p>
<p>I really appreciate all of your help!</p>
<p>Ask your dean for advice on how to handle this. As s/he’s read the essay, s/he already knows the issue and would be more familiar with how to handle the situation than any of us.</p>