<p>I have heard that many people hire professional college essay editors to edit their college application essays for them when applying to top schools such as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc. Personally, I can't imagine doing this and it seems really unfair for those who can't afford it.</p>
<p>So I have a few questions:</p>
<p>1) Have you heard about someone doing this?</p>
<p>2) Are you planning on doing this?</p>
<p>3) Do you think this is okay for people to do?</p>
<p>4) How big of a problem do you think that it is and can colleges really prevent it?</p>
<p>I think that this will be an interesting topic, especially considering that I have heard that more and more people are resorting to doing this.</p>
<p>I am an educational consultant who helps students with their college application essays, so I figured I would try to respond to your questions.</p>
<p>Is it unfair? Yes. Families with extra money can hire a consultant to help with essays, just like they can pay for extra SAT prep or tutoring. I have thought about this question a lot, and I don’t think there’s any way around the fact that money gives an extra advantage. That said, I try to balance that out by writing a blog with essay tips and making my essay ebook a free download. That doesn’t fix the unfairness, but it’s what I’ve come up with so far.</p>
<p>Is it unethical? I’m not going to say what’s ethical for anyone else. But as for my own ethics when working with students, I have drawn my own lines. I won’t write essays for students because I think that’s cheating (and also not really helpful). I will cut and paste students’ words into a new order, and I will delete words I think are extraneous. So my rule is that I will move and delete students’ words, but not add to them. But some people feel comfortable doing more, others less.</p>
<p>Is it helpful? I think there are two ways an educational consultant can be helpful. The first way is in identifying topics. I send my students extensive pre-writing exercises with questions I’ve written to encourage self-reflection. These exercises prepare students to find a topic they’re excited about. The second way is in being a sounding board. My written comments are mostly questions requesting more detail. “Why?”, “How so?”, and “How can you expand on this?” are questions I often use to torture my students. Of course, I can’t say for sure whether I’m helpful, but I think my pre-writing and question-asking push students to do the self-reflection necessary to write good essays.</p>
<p>What I don’t think is helpful (or, for me, ethical) is writing an essay for a student. If the student has Bs in English and a low SAT writing, a stellar essay will only raise suspicion. Also, if I wrote an essay for a student, it would sound like me, not like the student. Since one of the great opportunities with the essay is to reveal the student’s voice, I would be doing my students a disservice if I inserted my own voice into their essays.</p>
<p>I hope my response helps. Good luck writing!</p>
<p>Jon</p>
<p>toughgirl, how much did you pay? I have heard of some college consultants charging $1000 an <em>hour</em> for essay guidance…</p>