<p>My son has a good friend whose mom i have met and become a little friendly with through school, we are working on the prom committee together and this morning ran to have coffee after our meeting.....we were talking of course about college, applications,etc......and she confesses to me that she has literally filled out and written each and every essay for her son!! Who I might add happens to be a very smart high achieving and gifted athelete. I asked her why when he is more than capable and she said because he is too busy!!!!!!!! My mouth was hanging open, she told me that most of the apps went out and she thinks nothing of it and told me I am guillable because more people do this than I realize. I mean I have sat down with son and helped him with some grammar so added my two cents about an essay that was too long,etc..........but that was it. I was careful to let him preserve his own voice. I am still so shocked and haven't told my son because her son would be humiliated if he knew that we knew. Am I the innocent one here to believe that very few parents do this or is this what she referred to as an epidemic? WOW is all I can say.</p>
<p>My advice would be to not tell your son, and try to forget about it.</p>
<p>I am sure that some very large fraction of applicants to "top schools" either have heavy parental involvement in essay writing, or hire professionals to "review and make suggestions" on the essays for the student. I could post links to several Web services that provide this service, but it would violate CC's terms of use (and rightly so). So, yes, I think you are innocent, and you should be proud of your outrage.</p>
<p>We had a similar experience, maybe about 2 years ago we were with friends and ran into a couple we knew at a Starbucks. We all were heavily immersed in the application process and in the course of the conversation the woman said something to the effect that, "I wrote the Yale essay and he (her husband) wrote the Harvard essay." We just kind of sat there with our mouths open but didn't say anything like, "gee that is unethical." Don't remember where their high achieving daughter ended up.</p>
<p>So, to answer your question, I reacted by saying nothing and sitting there with my mouth open. </p>
<p>If I had it to do over again, I would say, "That is unethical, wrong, and disgusting."</p>
<p>Last year my daughter complained to me that she had to do everything for college. She said that many of her friends' moms filled out their applications. I was very surprised also.</p>
<p>I'm afraid this happens a lot. Will it feel to the student like he/she has been admitted to the college??</p>
<p>My daughter applied to 9 schools. I typed every envelope and photocopied every application, letter and document. I learned from that. We now have a printer that also copies so I won't have to do that for Zoosersister. I give you a lot of credit for staying silent. I would have been very upset, particularly if their kid was applying to the same school as mine.</p>
<p>I wouldn't be too worried about it. Colleges aren't really looking for perfectly composed, professional level essays; they just are looking to gain further insight into who the applicant is as person (what he or she is passionate about). Colleges have a list of stats and ECs already, and they just want to see the personal side of the applicant. I think that an essay written by the actual prospective student would do a much better job of this than an essay written by a mother.</p>
<p>I can speak from my own experience by saying that I would never let my mom or dad write any of my essays for me. I have so many things that I want to say about myself (that I can't express in any other parts of the application), and I think that this would all be lost if I let my parents do my work for me.</p>
<p>BTW, I'm a high school senior, and I am working on some of these essays at this very moment.</p>
<p>Again - a version of the helicopter parent whereby the parent feels as if s/he is not successful as a parent if the daughter/son isn't successful and therefore becomes an enabler. What's the message that the parent then sends to the student? . . . I agree with bethievt - will the student feel a sense of accomplishment when s/he gets accepted to college? What happens when grad school enters the picture? As with ctmomof3, it's one thing to suggest punctuation in an essay or to help fill in the esoteric blanks on the app, e.g., parents' background, etc.; it's another to do the essay writing itself.</p>
<p>Not having faced the situation in the past, I'd probably respond by asking a parent as to whether s/he thought it was fair to his/her child to interfere in that manner.</p>
<p>"How would you react to THIS?"</p>
<p>The same way I reacted to the "science fair projects" and the "student-conceived, initiated, organized, and executed multi-thousand dollar county-wide, major community fundraising event projects" and the "legacy/donor to the university- and I-will-get-in-no-matter-whats". </p>
<p>Shrug.</p>
<p>I'm like zoosermom. I did the clerical stuff, and I don't consider that unethical.</p>
<p>I also proofread everything for my daughter (who requested it) but not my son (who didn't). I consider this kind of borderline.</p>
<p>No way would I write an essay. That's way over the line.</p>
<p>In a perfect world: Four years from now she'll be filling out job applications and tweaking his resume. And then she'll wonder why he can't do anything on his own.</p>
<p>I want to add that our boys are ironically applying to a number of the same schools and he has the GPA over my son but my son's SAT scores are a wee bit stronger, his parents happen to be quite well educated so I am sure their masterpieces of essays are great, but I have been told several times that often these admissions people reading these can detect a parent written essay a mile away.....it just stinks because my own son goes on and on about how stressed he is with his major school workload, filling out these apps, studying for SAT 2's then you have parents like those that probably take a day off of work bang out all the essays and apps and boom its all done. As I often remind my son, life is not fair.........but at the end of a day we can BOTH lay our weary heads on our pillows knowing we did the right and ethical thing!</p>
<p>I cannot write as well as my son! Yes , he needed the input of "do not write the essay like a research paper!" (which he thought the essay would then sound too "corny"!), and husband is the grammarian. That was the extent of help he received. I did get postage for the envelopes and take them to the Post Office. And yes, I do believe that a lot of parents do just what you found out. What is most interesting to me is how parents and colleges for that matter, think that a kid is going to survive and finish a college that may not be a very good match for the student. For example, we know of kids that were admitted to some reach schools with lower than average grades and scores, and probably received all kinds of help on the essays. Have these kids been set up for failure? In my opinion, the parents are just kidding themselves. They won't be there to help write those papers for the <em>college</em> level classes! What will student do then?</p>
<p>I don't know how true it is but at an info session an adcom for Berkeley said that they can typically tell if the student doesn't write the essay and she highly recommended against parents writing them. </p>
<p>Maybe your son's friend's mom harmed his chances by writing his essays. I wonder if she'll fill out his roommate preference form as well - haha.</p>
<p>Oh, absolutely I did the clerical stuff--though I couldn't do the on-line stuff because I'd have messed up--I think I helped generate possible schools and helped set up trips. I called admissions offices and set things up. Son doesn't like making phone calls, so I did that. Son did everything else.</p>
<p>It is easy to tell whether or not the applicant wrote his or her own essays by comparing the writing portion of the SAT or ACT with the submitted application essays. Not only is it easy to check and compare, it is done. Admissions officers are much more savvy than we think. Furthermore, I do not really care because admissions committees are looking for genuine interest, warmth and understanding of the applicant which can be best conveyed by an excited teenager who really wants to attend that particular school.</p>
<p>I discovered this last year, too, and was appalled. I told my kids it would be in their best interest to have an adult look over their essay, and they chose teachers (even though my undergrad degree is in journalism). Even if a parent has the best of intentions to just check it for spelling, grammar, etc., it's hard not to recommend tweaking it here and there, which then usually comes across as insulting to the kid. Kids take critique from teachers so much better. </p>
<p>I heard that one of our local politicians had a friend of hers basically write her student's essay. Again, I think it's deplorable. </p>
<p>Now this feels very awkward bringing this up, but when in casual conversation this issue has come up, and I've criticized parents (not ones that are in that conversation) who have taken such liberties with their children, it always gets thrown back in my face, "But teriwtt, you don't have to worry about this - your kids are obviously very smart; they don't need you to intervene for them to get into schools." Well, maybe they didn't, but how do I know if they were or weren't turned down for possible merit scholarships. Even worse, that some kid whose parent wrote their essay got a scholarship over my kid because I didn't write my kids' essays. </p>
<p>However, I agree with zoosermom; since my daughters did most of their applications on line, it was easy for me to go in and fill out demographics, etc. They all tend to ask questions about the parents that my kids wouldn't necessarily know. Because D2's college application process included additional audition trips, I took over that. Since I'm the unofficial travel agent of the family (meaning I have lots of experience with finding the best deals), there's no way I was going to hand over my credit card for her to book flights/rental cars/hotels. </p>
<p>But writing essays, getting teacher recs, answering short questions was not anywhere on my list. The sad thing is, when you hear of an adult who is willing to take this route, chances are they 'cheat' in other aspects of their lives, such as taxes, insurance claims, need-based aid applications, etc. Action such as this usually speaks to someone's character that's not exclusive of other behaviors.</p>
<p>I hate that these stories lead to me getting defensive of my daughters' accomplishments when they've really done everything on their own. I'm sorry if someone else's kids' gifts lay in other areas that can't be as easily demonstrated on a college application.</p>
<p>ctmom, this is a good candidate for the academic ethics thread...</p>
<p>notredame, I disagree in that I see no valid correlation in the college application essay and how well a student does later on. If someone has statistics supporting that, I'd be very interested. Although, we'll never know if the statistics are valid anyway, since apparently there are so many ghostwriters writing college essays. I think someone on the other thread about college essays was on to something... just give the colleges your "blog"... MySpace, Facebook, whatever... they tell the story.</p>
<p>icy9ff8 - you give me hope that there is justice in this world :)</p>
<p>
This takes it down to the root. What it does it say to your kid? "You are not good enough to do this." That's what it says. Nothing else. Excuses of "He's too busy" are just a momma's way of deluding herself, trying to feel better about crippling her kid.</p>