<p>still shudder over essays blue iguana 
those were a disaster to do long distance…we finally agreed… he hated any comments or suggestions i made, i hated his essays…so go ahead and send them. They must have been better than i thought!</p>
<p>I agree that writing essays is WAY over the line!</p>
<p>My D had lots of schools on her list. Lots of schools we could not afford in a million years.
I helped research schools where she would be a likely merit candidate–I’d send her emails with a list of possibilities.</p>
<p>College is a HUGE expense, second for most of us, only to our home purchase. Unless money is not an issue for you, I think it is appropriate to provide assistance in researching.</p>
<p>That said, my D had lots of ideas about what she wanted in a school; if she’d not been interested whatsoever, I’d have been worried about her not being ready for school. I just helped her find schools w/ the things she wanted, and a price tag that would work!</p>
<p>I also on a few occasions helped with last-minute things like taking her merit essays to the post office or ordering test scores to be sent. I don’t think those things are crossing the line, she did all the work and just needed some help meeting LOTS of deadlines and making sure LOTS of details were attended to. She did most of it, I was just more of a coach and occasional go-fer.</p>
<p>I did most of the research for DD12, based on criteria that she specified. She was fully involved last spring with the academics and other activities at her highly rigorous HS, and frankly, that’s the kind of thing I enjoy doing. I came up with a list of 14 schools. She then researched them on the Internet and rejected 4 of them. So far, we’ve visited 6 of the 10 remaining schools, and they’re all still on the list (one just barely). She added one more at the suggestion of her GC, so she’s applying to 11 - 2 reaches, 2 matches, 7 safeties (admission safeties, not all financial safeties, hoping for merit aid).</p>
<p>But now she’s taken over the process completely. She had all her apps done before school started, except for those schools that had not yet released their apps or their common app supplement - and with no prompting from me. She did not offer to show me her essays, nor did I ask to see them. She’s made a spreadsheet with all the key dates, and she’s been emailing admissions reps with questions. At this point, I’m strictly an observer.</p>
<p>And when decision time comes, if she asks for my advice, I’ll give it. Otherwise, it’s completely her call, within the parental contribution parameters that DW and I have established and communicated to her. She has one solid financial safety that she really liked when we visited, and she stands a good chance to get a four-year full tuition waiver from our state flagship, so we’re in very good shape.</p>
<p>
Obviously, to most anyway, the parent writing the essay is way over the line and unacceptable. It’s also a ‘negative teaching moment’ in ethics (i.e. an example of lack of ethics in this area) for your D if she knows you did this. The part about ‘not dreaming of sending off’ makes no sense at all - if there was no plan to use it in some form, even as a starter for your D, then why’d you do it? Strange.</p>
<p>I agree that a parent can and generally should advise, inform, present options, discuss practicalities including the funding available for college, and even prod if necessary for those students who are clueless, disorganized, don’t have their priorities aligned, etc. These 17 y/o kids, even though accomplished in some areas, aren’t necessarily knowledgeable about particular colleges, financial logistics, timelines, etc. and sometimes aren’t good at planning ahead and considering consequences (i.e. meeting the required timelines) and apparently this even one of the last areas of the brain to fully form and it’s not until post-17 y/o that it does.</p>