You have a chance to turn this around now. Be honest from now on, take MYOS’s advice.
It’s not worth it to have this hanging over you.
And yes I agree, it’s good that you know now and still have time to apply to lots of great schools, with your own essay!
I also don’t think the schools OP has applied to will accept him even if he admits what he did and offers to send a new essay. (They especially won’t do this if they find out that he’s only telling them because the fraud was going to be revealed by somebody else.) Apply to other schools.
A few thoughts:
This is really wrong. I would pull all the applications immediately and either apply regular decision with your own essays, or as above austinmshauri said, take a gap year. Then you can reevaluate why you all did this in the first place.
I would like to ask something. Was there a lot of help, or did you have absolutely nothing to do with the essay? Tutors, college coaches, etc help students heavily with essays all of the time. I helped my daughters reword a sentence or two on their apps, but that doesn’t mean I wrote it for them.
If you withdraw your applications and write an essay on your own to a different school, could the tutor still cause problems for you somehow?
Anyone – is it possible to contact schools directly and say you sent the completely wrong essay by mistake? Would any school be okay with this, or is that absolutely nuts? If the OP is realizing that he and his parents royally screwed up and is trying to fix it, could he do all of his own work and try to withdraw/replace the incorrect essay? I know when you submit the common app it says no changes can be made without directly contacting the school (or something like that).
hi OP
I think austinmshauri had the best advice, but I wanted to add one thing. please please tell us you did not share your common app password with this “tutor”. you are right to fix it immediately. before any admissions decisions are made. good luck
How would the tutor continue to “loom over” OP? After you’re accepted/enrolled in a college, and especially after graduation, any threats would be irrelevant. Some of you have seen too many action movies.
And how can this tutor prove he wrote the essay? Just by emailing a couple colleges? No, any random person can do that. Unless he has some substantive proof (and not something easily manipulated like screenshots) it seems like a stretch that a college would believe him. Maaaybe lawyering up might scare him but that seems a little overkill.
At any rate, I think @MYOS1634 advice is still the best. Write your own essays and put this behind you.
@thingamajig can one not change Common App passwords?
@itsmyusername , re:#46: if the OP is applying to selective colleges, the tutor can certainly jeopardize his or her admissions chances. I presume that the tutor has some form of proof, and just the possibility that the essay was not the student’s own work would remove that applicant from consideration in a highly competitive scenario. I also think that the OP’s family should do everything they possibly can to blacklist the tutor in their own community. I suspect he or she has pulled this stunt before, feeding on the desperation families have for admission to selective colleges. I also suspect that the OP and family will be reluctant to abandon their pursuit of admission to colleges where they have already submitted the tutor’s essay. They are certainly free to call the tutor’s bluff: after all, the tutor will be outed within the admissions community if he or she makes good on that threat. The college admissions staffs could report him or her, along with the OP, for fraud.
I agree that the best course of action now would be to amend your Common App. I’m sure students ask to change their essays for additional colleges all the time. Add some public universities that aren’t on the Common App, and use the Universal App for other colleges.
I implore you NOT to meet the tutor’s blackmail demands. No good can conceivably come from that.
I wouldn’t pay him. Your safest bet is probably to withdraw the applications you have submitted and start over at schools he does not know you are applying to. If you want to be ultimately conscience cleared, you inform the schools affected (by phone, not in writing) what you did and accept the consequences (which will very likely but not definitely mean your apps get rejected). Walk away from him and don’t look back. If he reports you, you make sure his participation is also revealed. He is in a tenuous position, too, so he shouldn’t be so anxious to let anyone know of his part in the process.
And learn your lesson from this. Really. Poor decision.
Call the police. You made a mistake. He has committed a crime.
@thingamajig:Very important aspect you bring up regarding the Common App passwords. OP?
@itsmyusername: Colleges and universities take academic integrity very seriously. That goes hand-in-hand with personal and professional integrity. Academic institutions and organizations rescind their awards and honors when there is sufficient evidence that someone violated a chief tenet of those standards prior to receipt of the honor. Imagine the scenario: You go on to become Attorney General of a state, or the city’s District Attorney and then the university which conferred your degree discovers the dishonesty from years past, rescinds that degree, which jeopardizes the standing of your graduate degree, etc. Now, you are unqualified for the office you hold, and you are shamed.
It can happen. It has.
Am I really the only one having a hard time believing any of this tale?
Considered it, but also considered the very real possibility of it happening. Why too-far fetched for you?
Apply to other schools with all your own materials. Chalk this up as a life lesson and avoid these shady shortcuts in the future. They rarely work out.
@MommaJ : Legitimate question, but there are enough slime balls in the world that I’ll take OP at face value until it’s proven otherwise.
Withdraw your application from each and every school you applied to using his essay. Write a new essay and replace it in the common application. I think there are limits to how many times you can edit essay in common application so beware of that. Apply to schools using your essay and there is nothing he can do. Anybody can call a college and say anything. However so long as it is your essay i think youll be fine. Dont tape record any conversation without first knowing the laws in your state recording conversations or you may inadvertently break a law. Dont add more smoke to the fire that has already been lit. Lesson be learned. I also would not notify adcom about this other than say you are withdrawing application. You dont need an explanation to do so. Move on and forget the sleeze ball. Consulting with a lawyer might be wise but without proof of anything in writing there is nothing you can do. Its one word against the other re the blackmail. Keep your social media accounts secure from his eyes. Dont write a college essay regarding this.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
No. However, while one can question the veracity of the OP, this is a question that may have some validity to another applicant.
I would think that both parties communicated via email or IM or something, and that there is a record of such, at least from the OP’s side. The slimeball tutor may have done this enough times that he only contacted the family by phone and yet messages or replies were best left for him via email.
The one thing that is certain if the OP finds the tutor coming after his family, exposing the tutor would not only stop the immediate blackmail efforts, but also allow others who felt so pressured to come forth. Of course, the tutor’s history in the particular region would be suspect, and perhaps all records of prior clients subpoenaed, and those people also exposed.
Could become very, very nasty.
@Waiting2exhale : Blackmailers and child molesters. There are many similarities in the efforts to make the victims keep silent. Speaking up is not easy, but it is the one sure cure, They can’t keep doing it once they are exposed.