<p>Yes yes…you can keep preaching. But this is the way it is. Unless a new system is invented that prevents kids from getting outside help on their applications, this is the way it will always be. So I’m not sure what your point is, other than to share with everyone that your children did not need anyone’s help to write their essays. The fact of the matter is that they were no doubt competing with other children who had their essays professionally written. And some kids who take AP classes have extensive tutoring outside of the class. And some kids have years of SAT tutoring. And some kids hire expensive college consultants to “package” them. I guess you might say that one of the few places that ability is more transparent is on the playing field, since you can’t hire someone to make that goal for you. (Certainly, expensive training probably doesn’t hurt for some kids to get their skills up to where other kids may already be, but in the end it is still the performance of that kid.)</p>
<p>It’s the way of the world. I didn’t say I liked it, and I didn’t even say I subscribe to it, but to me there is no point in even bothering to preach about how everyone should be on level ground because it never works that way.</p>
<p>P.S. I just read the post above mine and realized everything was said a lot better than I just said it.</p>
<p>When one high SAT/GPA kid gets rejected by a college, some people will guess this kid must have written a horrible essay. while if one low SAT/GPA kid gets accepted by the same college, some poeple will guess this kid must have written an award winning essay. Often time this kind of guess is beyond common sense. The common sense is, ON AVERAGE, kids with high SAT/GPA writes better than the one with low SAT/GPA. SAT has a writing section which student has to write an essay and it contributes the overall SAT score. You can not cook up your SAT essay.</p>
<p>The purpose of the college essays is not to evaluate the quality of the writing.</p>
<p>Everyone who writes a college essay with that expectation in mind is wasting a lot of effort and going down the wrong path. If with all the “help” and “editing” from parents and others, the unique voice of the applicant is lost – then all that help is counterproductive. </p>
<p>Of course it makes sense to proofread an essay for obvious spelling and grammatical errors before submission. </p>
<p>But the point of the essay is the message (or messages) delivered. </p>
<p>Unfortunately the message – “I’m doing my best to impress you with how well my writing conforms to conventional standards” – is the wrong one. Many students will get accepted in spite of submitting pablum – but I doubt that there are many (if any) students who actually get accepted because of that parentally-engineered essay.</p>
<p>Question: Do any of you posters who see a lot of parental “help” in the essay process know of any case where the parent or hired consultant wrote what would be considered a “risk” essay?</p>
<p>Hey Ready to Roll, thanks for the props =) . Great minds … lol. Being the shy person that I am (must have Minnesotans in the family tree) it’s nice to see I’m not the only one who got a little “het up” (that’s the southern branch acomin’ thru) just about then. <3</p>
<p>calmom…totally agree…the purpose of the essay is not to evaluate writing skills. Also, the topic is not the important thing. The whole idea of the essay is for the applicant to demonstrate attributes about themselves, to let the adcoms know them better.</p>
<p>“but to me there is no point in even bothering to preach about how everyone should be on level ground because it never works that way.”</p>
<p>I never said everyone should be on a level ground. This is not, and never will be, the case. My argument is that it is more important to independently complete a college application on time than to get into X college that you haven’t earned. It’s fine if kids get help as long at it’s the senior who is taking responsibility for asking and for getting help. Yes, my kids got editing advice from my husband when asked. They may have gotten help from teachers and friends. I agree with the above poster who says we all need to help each other. But the senior needs to be in charge of the application process.</p>
<p>A student earns admission to a college through academic merit, for the most part. If a kid is going to major in physics or Latin their lack of experience in independently carrying out all the complexities of applying for admission should not be held against them.</p>
<p>If they plan to major in petty administration, then maybe its a relevant to skill set to take care of all the documentation themselves.</p>
<p>It’s not mastering the complexities of the application, it’s having the responsibility to take it on as one’s own task. That said, my daughter was totally able to take this on, my son wasn’t. </p>
<p>I admit to overseeing his application season; I wouldn’t write his essays at all. That WAS his job.</p>
<p>I know a lot of moms who “helped” fill out their kids apps. We have a friend who didn’t know where he was going to college until sometime in the summer, he was so disinterested in the process. That was 30 years ago. Met his wife there and is now a mainstream husband with, job, house and two kids. But he had no interest in college and really squeaked through his high school. </p>
<p>For some parents it is the last thing they do for their kids. They just don’t want to have that kid on the sofa the next year. And many times it works. If a parent wants to take that chance of throwing away that kind of money, fine with me.</p>
<p>I had to hover over my kids closer than I would have like to have done. They are all ditzy, unorganized and just not all there in doing these things. They certainly would not have had the choices they had, probably just have gone local except their private prep schools and I were on their backs to get stuff done and I was keeping track ot the process.</p>
<p>GTalum: My S got his done, too, but he needed supervision. I never saw his actual app’s because they were all done on computer (thank goodness for that.) Boys like computers better than writing, in general.</p>
<p>If he had restricted his app’s to five he probably could have done it himself with no supervision, but I was too afraid to let him do that.</p>
<p>If I had not monitored my four children’s application process, they would not have gotten them in on time! Excel spreadsheets were used & updated to ensure that everything was done and in before the deadlines.</p>
<p>We never wrote essays or even looked at essays, I realize some parents probably write the kid’s essays for them! Admissions people can compare the SAT writing to a professional/parent written essay, looking for that “voice” of a 17-18 year old. If the SAT writing doesn’t match up with application essay, where do you suppose that application ends up? In the “Deny” pile. I have read this in a college admissions article, where an adcom says to his co-workers “I think the parent wrote a pretty good essay, don’t you?” </p>
<p>I have also faxed in graded papers to admissions offices over the years. Some schools ask for them, with the teacher’s comments on them. That is another tool schools use.</p>
<p>“The SAT essay has almost no similarities to a good college essay”</p>
<p>I think a good college essay is included in the AP English test. Remember only selective colleges require college essay not the state university except honor school at least this is the case in PSU.</p>
<p>“College is NOT to evaluate the quality of writing, the purpose is to get to know more of applicant” (roughly as I can not copy it the second time)</p>
<p>If the purpose is to get to know more of applicant, do not we think college interview is a much better tool than college essay? You look at the applicant face to face, read his/her resume and ask the pointed questions about it. If you think interview is time limited, then you have teacher’s recommendation. Teacher knows the applicant at least a year.</p>
<p>How reliable is the adcom get to know the applicant by reading essay anyway?</p>
<p>“If I had not monitored my four children’s application process, they would not have gotten them in on time! Excel spreadsheets were used & updated to ensure that everything was done and in before the deadlines.”</p>
<p>I’m not here to be critical of anyone’s parenting style. Only you know what works for your family. But, what if some/all apps don’t get in on time? What’s the worst that can happen? if he doesn’t get into dream school, he learns a valuable lesson and will probably go somewhere else and do just fine. Maybe he has/wants to take a gap year after disappointing admission results. I’m sure he would be more motivated the following year with all his friends in college and an extra year of maturity. Shouldn’t the monkey be on the child’s back and not the parent’s?</p>
<p>As I said, I have a ditzy son as well who fortunately only applied to 4 schools. Anything more than that, I might feel “the need” to be supervising as well. But, he didn’t want me involved and picked a number of schools that he could manage. He missed some scholarship deadlines and therefore, his dream of going out of state. But, it was his problem and his lesson to be more careful and judicious when applying to places.</p>
<p>GTatum – I see your point, but I see both sides. For some it’s a lengthier process. My S may always need some help in getting on the stick. His last GF did that job, too. Ideal? No.</p>
<p>He does all his own college work, including learning Ancient Greek and writing really involved papers. </p>
<p>Some things are overwhelming to him.</p>
<p>This year he moved himself out of the dorm himself. He was supposed to take a 3:30 ferry, but ended up on a 9:00 ferry because it took him so long. Many frantic phone calls, getting lost, leaving some stuff in MA because it wouldn’t fit in the car, etc etc, but he did it and got home on his own steam.</p>
<p>To be honest, I didn’t know parents got involved at all with the application process until I found this site. It was my impression that this was supposed to be the complete responsibility of the student. I guess I’m lucky it worked out and that my daughter didn’t need our assistance, because she sure didn’t get any. Of course, she’s our first, so who knows how we will handle it with D2. No excel spreadsheets, though, since I don’t know to do anything beyond basic word processing.</p>
I agree with this … and it is also why I flinch when I read about parents making their kids start their essays months in advance … this approach certainly works for lots of students … but for others the multi-multi-multi edited version may be “written better” but loses the voice of the student. Earlier a poster (Hunt I think) hypothesized that only really good or really bad essays make a difference … I tend to agree with this … and that a lot of defines “good” or “bad” is how much the essay provides a window into who the kid is … and for me an overly polished essay is likely to lose this edge.</p>
<p>Starting essays months in advance doesn’t have to mean that they get over-polished or the student’s voice gets lost.</p>
<p>The best reason to start in advance is to get it done when the student is not dealing with a lot of homework, especially if they’re taking AP or IB courses with lots of reading, writing, problem sets, projects, etc. If they have several essays (different versions of long & short), it’s a very good stress-reducer to get at least some of them over with. It’s time-shifting when to write the essays, not necessarily taking longer to write them.</p>
<p>In my daughter’s case, it did take her a long time to get comfortable with the genre of the application essay. She’s a very good, fast writer, but she really did not enjoy writing about herself or revealing things about herself. She kept spinning out more drafts on new topics, all very interesting, but none of them said much about her except that she could write well. Finally I put a “No New Essays” sign on her bedroom door and suggested that she stop writing new ones and start deciding which one she was going to turn in. This whole process took a couple of months and I don’t know that it could have been shortened. She applied ED, so it was very helpful to deal with it during the summer and early fall.</p>