- For several years after college graduation, and with a number of friends working in the college's admissions office, one of my kids got hired several years as a part-time, piece-work admissions essay reader/grader. There were always at least two readers for every essay, one of whom was always a full-time admissions staffer, but the other might be a seasonal worker like my kid.
There was training involved, of course, and a fair amount of mind-meld and common culture. My kid was best friends and housemates with one admissions staffer, and had longstanding friendships with two or three others. At various points, my kid was a full-time student adviser at another college in the area, a graduate student at the university where this was happening, and a researcher with a university affiliate working on campus.
Anyway, the point is: the university was coming out of pocket to pay extra people just to make certain there were enough people to read all of the essays. It wasn’t merely symbolic.
- My kids, too, wrote their own essays, 100%, even though others commented. And the essays were very good representations of who they were and how they thought -- something that was not completely in their favor, especially for one who came off as a little immature and self-centered because -- believe it or not! -- he was a little immature and self-centered. His best essay by far was his common app essay, in which he said almost nothing about himself but analyzed a current hot issue in his city's school system. That really showed him at his best, analytical and passionate. His biggest admissions success -- a fat merit scholarship offer -- came from a college that only got that essay.
- Re: adults are not better writers. I wrote my own essays. My parents never even saw them. I was a good enough writer to be called in for a plagiarism investigation a few months later, as a college freshman, the main evidence being that a five-page essay I wrote was too polished and too sophisticated for a freshman to have written. I got a prize out of it after they apologized.
I was a better writer then than I am now.