"@maya54 It is great that you care enough to ask what you should do with regards to giving advice to your friends child. I wouldn’t give advice to the friend beyond saying “stay positive”
I have been giving essay topic development advice and read- throughs of essays for friends and relatives for 6 years. I did NOT do this for my own kid, hired someone to work with them and heard their advice and started going on CC. Around that time my good friends husband died right when her daughter was starting the application/ essay process to highly selective schools. And she asked me to help her. Based on my research here and the often excellent advice I told her that her wonderfully written essay on her father would have to go, it told me nothing about HER. She totally re-worked it to talk about her dad while talking about herself. I was thrilled when she got acceptance to both Ivy’s she applied to.
My friend told some of her friends and every year I’ve given help with essay topic planning to 3 or 4 kids. I was pretty pleased last year when I practically besieged a friend’s son that he HAD to write about his extra-cirricular " benchwarmer" story that would never show up on his application otherwise: he was picked by his coach to work with local authorities to be a Controlled Buyer (to attempt to purchase alcohol from stores while underage ) He got an e-mail from the head of admissions at one university saying it was one of their all time favorites! ( it started with him sweating as he held a six pack and the police sheparded him into their car)
However this kids story hit so close to home I felt I couldn’t be objective so sought out the excellent CC community