How much help on a college essay do you think is acceptable/ethical?

College Essays
1

<p>I applied to college two years ago. I wrote most of the essays almost completely on my own, with some comments from my school guidance counselor. There was one supplement essay in particular though that I received a lot of help revising, as my parents personally knew someone who was familiar with the college admissions process. Once a week for about two months, I spoke with this person through Skype and received a lot of suggestions for how to make this supplement essay more attractive to the admissions officers. While I wrote the entire essay by myself, there was a huge difference between the first draft, which I did completely on my own, and the final version I submitted after receiving extensive feedback.</p>

<p>So anyways, I would like to know how much revision by others you consider to be ethical. Obviously, having someone else write the essay for you would be outright cheating, but there is a sort of gray area regarding what constitutes an unfair advantage over the typical applicant.</p>

2

<p>I’m probably in the minority but I don’t find it at all unethical, except maybe in extreme, isolated scenarios. Not everyone is a future poet laureate, we have engineers and musicians and economists that are all great candidates in their own right, but might not necessarily be the most eloquent in their written word. I don’t see how it’s anything but a good thing if we help these people present themselves in the best possible way, that does justice to who they are. </p>