<p>Wondering…in this age of easy info access, PSATs, SATs etc etc and the Common App,
Meetings amongst the AdCom and GCs etc…</p>
<p>How much privacey do our students have, really?</p>
<p>A parent told me the other night that it is believed a student who was expected to get into several schools didn’t get in due to using the same essays for various schools and that it is believed the AdCom people talk…
I wondered whether he just wrote bad essays, or if the essays were’t massaged enough to fit the individual schools…</p>
<p>Is that the case, really? That AdComs talk? Or would this be a rare rare instance?</p>
<p>I mentioned this possibility and hypothesis of this one parent to my spouse
----his comment was that since so much information gets collected about these kids–and with the common app etc, isn’t it possible that information gets shared/sold.</p>
<p>I can see that there could be marketing/statistics done–
for example–
students who apply to x,y,and z and most often expected to apply to p and q…</p>
<p>However, do you think there can be conversation about singular names/candidates?</p>
<p>I believe that using the same essay is fine- I haven’t heard otherwise , however if they felt the essays were too similar to another applicant- that may raise a flag.</p>
<p>^^^ humm …hadn’t thought of that…
I was trying to figure out why more than one school would deny a seemingly good match…
that would make more sense (if the essay was particularly similar to a memorable essay of a previousl applicant)</p>
<p>That what you heard was hearsay and probably a lot of BS. Not saying that duplicate applicant essays (not original to the applicant) wouldn’t raise a giant red flag, especially if it were a memorable one, but students are expected to apply to multiple schools and students are NOT expected to write a separate essay for each submission of the common application (key word there: common). However, you are expected to have original ideas for supplemental applications, although son found once he had written a few, he could generally rework his answers for others. So they weren’t exact duplicates, but I’d be lying to say they were each original.</p>
<p>By using the common app it seems like the colleges are sending the message that they don’t care if you use the same application for different schools - and that includes the essays.</p>
<p>I have a hard time believing that various adcoms sit around and talk about the kids they are reviewing with their peers at other schools - when would they have the time? And then to all decide to deny the same kid?</p>
<p>I think it is more likely that the applicant, who may have the grades/test scores/ec’s, just didn’t have that good of an essay, or maybe the recommendations were just so-so, or maybe they were the perfect candidate and got rejected anyway (when a school admits 10% of their applicants that leaves a lot of room for rejection).</p>
<p>I hope the student in question applied to match & safety schools as well…</p>
<p>I’m not too fond of the common app. I think it creates a situation where it’s too easy for students to just add college without careful consideration of what the individual college means to the student and is the reason in some cases for the “supersized” lists of college applications. It is entirely possible that there are two ad coms at overlap schools that are friends who might relay a story about an essay or stats that make the candidate familiar to the other ad comm or two friends that do interviews that interviewed the same kid, but I imagine that would be rare, rare, rare.</p>
<p>With the Common App. you cannot change the “Common App. essay” for each school. When my son applied he had the “Common App. essay” and one other essay for schools that allowed/suggested an additional essay. The supplemental (or non-Common App.) short answer questions may have been individual to each school (although I suspect they were mostly the same with a change of name). I can think of only one school where he wrote an entire additional essay and even that one was composed in part of short answer responses that he had used for other schools.</p>
<p>All good thoughts
This parent felt that there was some corss talk with the ad coms
hopever that seems like urban myth/;egend
as I cannot imagient he time avaiable</p>
<p>and yet
my husband felt that there has to be so much information collected that perhaps its sold out the back door in some way…in some form…</p>
<p>But…I don’t understand why they would bother to “sell” the information to other adcoms. I don’t get the advantage that would be for anyone. Listen, it’s all about statistics. If 90% (or even 80% or 70%) of kids that apply to a college are rejected, and there is one kid that is rejected at multiple schools, it is much more probable that the kid just didn’t stand out. Not that there is anything wrong with him, or that there is some big conspiracy He may not even have BAD essays, just typical ones.</p>
<p>Right, I realize whoever this boy was the mother referred to–could have just been the wrong fit etc…</p>
<p>I guess we were thinking that there is tons of statistical information to be mined there…</p>
<p>how many apps total
how they break down along gender, ethnic,geographical lines,
which schools are best at drawing students outside of their respective regions
which schools go head to head in competing versus which get the summer melt/waitlist</p>
<p>I am not sure how a student could be rejected due to essay regurgitation/AdCom cross talk…</p>