"Finding Applicants Who Plagiarize "

mathmom
Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:40:48 +0000

I wonder if the adcoms are comparing those excerpts to the sanitized essays on the apps. I would do so just to see the differences.

I wouldn’t. Aside from the fact, that both my kids have handwriting that makes reading their essays painful. The SAT essays from my first son were deer in the headlights for the first 15 minutes as he tried to come up with examples for their strange questions and 10 minutes of frantic trying to get something down on paper for the last. His actually college essay was about two weeks of deer in the headlights followed by several days of writing and polishing.

My younger son doesn’t experience the same level of writer’s blocks, but he tried out several different essays before coming up with ones he liked enough to submit.

As for Captain Crunch? I have no problem with it as a jumping off point for an essay.

We keep forgetting that the ad coms aren’t using these essays as writing samples - they are looking at them for some kind of insight into the personalities of the students.