<p>Lets say Peter's parents wrote a research paper for peter, and it got published. Will colleges find care about it? I have been thinking about this because there is a real life story happened around me. This is really unfair for most of the students working really hard. Will colleges found out? And if anyone wrote a anonymous letter to the admissions, will they care? </p>
<p>Really feeling unfair for the students working hard. :-(
Hope anyone can help the one working hard and deserve the chance for education.</p>
<p>I think it’s unlikely that colleges would find out unless there’s a great disparity between Peter’s demonstrated ability in that area and the quality of paper that he wrote.</p>
<p>Neither colleges nor academic journals are going to pay attention to anonymous allegations about who wrote the paper. Even if there’s a signed accusation, neither the colleges nor journals will be able to prove that the parents, not Peter, wrote the paper.</p>
<p>My advice is to focus on your own life and make it the best that you can. What Peter’s parents are teaching him about getting ahead eventually will catch up to him. Someone who is taught to cheat and lie to get ahead will continue to cheat and lie even after they get to college, and eventually they will be caught and in disgrace. Karma is a …</p>
<p>This came up last year. There was an article about the whole squealers sending things into admissions department issue. They quoted several admission representatives at different colleges. The net net was that they get more notes sent to them about alleged inappropriate actions of an applicant. Virtually, all the admission officers said they completely dismiss b]anonymous** letters and the like. So, if you want a charge to be taken seriously you will need to give them your name and legitimate contact info. You need to ask yourself why you care about being anonymous.</p>
<p>Northstarmom, thanks for your advice. ctyankee, and also thank you.
I guess, I will suggest the other students to focus on their own work. Since life is unfair in general, they need to prepare well for the coming life and challenge. I believe, eventually, the honest people rules.</p>
<p>“Lets say Peter’s parents wrote a research paper for peter, and it got published.”</p>
<p>If the parents are academics, academic fraud could cost them their jobs. This would be a much bigger deal than whether “Peter” gets into college X. However, there are papers and then there are papers, and different journals have different policies.</p>
<p>If the paper has multiple authors, anyone who has ever been on the research team can be considered to be a potential author, and the team supervisor decides which names appear on the paper and the order of those names. “Peter” may have washed test tubes and fed the rats, but in some labs that would qualify him for having his name included. In other labs, out of a labor force of dozens, only the three who actually dreamed up the experiment, supervised the overall progress of the experiment, and actually sat down with the data to work out the conclusion will get any credit.</p>
<p>In the case of single author papers, should the journal where the paper was published determine that the author of record is not the actual author, the paper may be rescinded. Or, the journal might publish a note correcting the name of the author. Or, it might just ignore the issue altogether.</p>