I think essays should be taken out of the admissions process completely. Mainly because some percentage of them are not written by the applicant, to what extent, I don’t know, but that has to be happening. A larger percentage of them are probably written by the applicant to some degree and then heavily edited by another party. Then, you have the kids who don’t have parents or other resources to turn to for assistance, or the money to buy essay writing books, so those kids’ essays are being compared with those of the kids who cheat or get significant help. That is just not a fair system.
I don’t know what the answer is - but it’s not using SAT or ACT essays - my kid had a prompt where she had to analyze a writer’s essay on the topic of the effect of air conditioning on society. Good grief.
I think just a few straightforward short answer questions on the SAT/ACT like: “What is something you like in your hometown?”, “Describe a happy event in your life.” or “What is something that you find very challenging?” would be perfectly adequate to assess a kid’s writing skills and ability to express their personality and uniqueness. At least it would guarantee that the student actually did the writing themselves in that proctored environment. When there is no way to prove that an applicant actually writes an essay themselves with no assistance, the value of it is nil in my opinion.
I realize this does not address the OP’s question, but I felt compelled to add this addendum to my previous rant.
“I think essays should be taken out of the admissions process completely. Mainly because some percentage of them are not written by the applicant, to what extent, I don’t know, but that has to be happening. A larger percentage of them are probably written by the applicant to some degree and then heavily edited by another party.”
For sure many international applicants are having their essays written for them, just spend some time at a country of you choice and you’ll get a pretty good idea of the “resources” international applicants use, like you know how tutors get a copy of the SATs earlier than US-based tutors. Anyway, I digress. Intl students are typically just 10% of the applicants, but I do think essays should be looked at. I suggested in one thread that CA essay should be eliminated and replaced by each college having their own essays, and maybe one essay be handwritten (like the old days). This would cut down on the number of apps as well.
The only way you’ll stop essays being written by other people is for colleges to compare an essay in say a freshman seminar and the application one, and if there’s a difference in quality do some kind of reprimand, and let that get out.
My DS really didn’t start engaging in the process until August. He didn’t have his final college list until late September. He did complete a one week common app essay workshop at his high school in August, but he hadn’t started supplemental essays until late September. I hired a tutor whose primary responsibility was to set up a timeline for DS for his essays and hold him to it. The tutor was also his second set of eyes for editing. DS met with the tutor once a week from about mid-sept until mid December. I was clear that all apps needed to be ready to go by Dec 20. While this may not work for all, my son would have never missed a deadline for a teacher or a tutor. The tutor was affordable and took a lot of the stress off my relationship with my son.
Sometimes we mean well as parents, but the reality is we can add a lot of stress to the process. When I first read my son’s common app essay I was moved by it, but I also doubted it was a good idea. I called his high school counselor who said he should not change one word. Sometimes we are too close to the situation and it is helpful to have unbiased third parties involved.
Regarding the essay: never change the student’s voice. If you are good at grammar, spelling, etc. then feel free to edit for those types of errors. Otherwise, you absolutely must let the student express him/herself, in all of their 17/18 year old glory.
One of my kids wrote a personal statement that absolutely appalled me. I thought it was terrible and even vulgar, a poor attempt to be funny IMO and I said so. Off it went anyway…and the acceptances rolled in, including from top 20s.
I learned two things: (1) this is the kid’s essay, not yours, and (2) I must have a lousy sense of humor.
“The only way you’ll stop essays being written by other people is for colleges to compare an essay in say a freshman seminar and the application one, and if there’s a difference in quality do some kind of reprimand, and let that get out.”
I believe colleges have access to the writing component of the ACT/SAT. If they wanted to compare the writing, they could. Of course, some allowance needs to be made between a piece of writing carefully prepared by a student over some period of time, with editing - and one written hastily, in a timed setting. But things like voice and style might be comparable as a check on authenticity.
What worked for us this summer is, once a week, we made an appointment to do application stuff. For my daughter, it was mostly to work on essays (the Common App as well as some smaller ones required of different programs). I knew I couldn’t bother her until Tuesday; she knew she had to bring it on Tuesday.
I was pretty much organizing the campus visit train - we spent most of junior year narrowing it down to seven she wanted to see. Our job was a little easier because she wanted to stay in-state and do a direct-admit nursing program, so that made it manageable. While she toured and talked to people, I took a crazy amount of notes. Now all that is summed up in “cheat sheets” for each college - and this week, we are meeting to determine if we are indeed comparing apples to apples or if we want more information from any of them.
The goal is to have all applications completed by October 1 - at least her part - and have transcripts and ACT scores requested. We shall see.
Interesting the number of people forcing their kids to write the essays in the summer. For both of my kids (both my honors English kid and my regular English kid) at their school, the first assignment in English was to start working on their essays. They are given the prompts and with all English paper assignments they had to write outlines which were turned in and edited then their essays which were turned in edited and graded. The earliest early action deadline we faced was November one. And as expected my son got all of his materials collected and submitted on October 29.
Got scholarships to all schools he applied to (we are not an ivy type family)
bhs1978 not all schools offer essay support at school or include it as part of the curriculum. For some families, perhaps students in fall sports, those being recruited or others still testing, starting in summer is highly advised.
We tried, and failed, to get our kids to do the Common App essay over the summer. Makes a lot of sense to do it over the summer, but it just didn’t happen. We let the essay slide over the summer and instead focused on ACT prep. That’s actually a great thing to do over the summer with an eye to taking the first ACT/SAT in early September and being completely done with the standardized testing before senior year grind cranks up.
For the youngest kid, we did spend some time over the summer brainstorming about various possible Common App essay topics. Having a work-able topic then made the essay support in HS english class much more productive.
If you have the app list pretty well identified, we found it easier to get the kids to write first drafts of the shorter college specific essays over the summer. In addition to being shorter, those also tend to require less of the deep dive introspection that the teenagers (rightly) dread. If you can get two or three of those in good shape, you will be way ahead. Since you likely can recycle those for multiple schools over and over.
As part of my job as application administrative assistant for the youngest, I created a “College App Stuff” folder on the cloud that was shared between me and the kid. It made things SO much easier than how I handled the older kids.
All the spreadsheets, timelines, essay prompts, draft essays, resume, etc. etc. etc. went in there. Most helpful was the master password document. You are going to wind up with online credentials for every single school applied to (at many schools there is more than one online system and set of credentials), plus accounts at ACT, SAT, Naviance, Common App. Having that list continuously updated, backed up and shared was huge.
I think the college application process is stressful to both teens and parents for two reasons. First, the stakes seem high. Second, and maybe more importantly, the process ends with the child leaving home. And neither parent nor child is truly certain, underneath, if they are ready for the separation.
You might remind yourself of what you said in your first sentence. Your son has always been independent and self-motivated. If he always gets his school work done and does not hand in work late, without your needing to supervise or nag, he surely won’t be late handing in his applications if left to his own devices. Step back.
I am practicing the same myself, as I notice my son already has completed his summer homework for his upcoming AP classes in physics and calculus, and regularly works on his AP English and College Spanish summer readings… but has chosen to do all of the above FIRST, and has saved his college essay work (which also is a homework assignment for AP English) for last. He did work on his essay a bit this weekend, and, as we are still in July, that’s early enough from any objective, nonemotional standpoint. But HE needs to be in charge, and I need to keep my own anxieties out of it so he can manage his own without being further burdened by mine.
Find a safety/financial safety school that doesn’t require essays. Many big publics have simple applications that require little more than a transcript/test scores/name/address. Get that one in, and then you can stop sweating quite so much.
I have been through the process with 5 kids so far, 3 boys and 2 girls. The girls were much more interested, organized, and engaged in the process. With the boys (all top students/NMFs) it was like pulling teeth. S#3 only applied to one school (which offered an automatic scholarship). He said, “All colleges are the same, I’ll just go there.” No references required. Essay optional. (“So, why bother if it’s optional?”) Seemed WAY too simple. (Worked out–he’s about to start his senior year there. . .) The other two required a lot more prodding and secretarial help. With no better results.
OP here. Thanks to all for the thoughtful replies! I had intended to step away from CC for a day or two to take a quick breather and gain some perspective, but got an unwelcome distraction that kept me away longer: sudden excruciating back and leg pain brought on by compressed discs I didn’t realize I had, and I have been lying flat on my back on the floor for the last week! It makes you look at things differently for sure, and I am in a better frame of mind (when it comes to the college process) now.
I appreciate all of the suggestions. Some of the things - administrative tasks, budget discussions, etc. - I have already been doing. Other things I hadn’t thought of, but are really good ideas that I am going to implement. S is on board especially with discussing college only at the weekly meeting and with the Google docs sharing.
Judging from the emotional reaction I had to @TheGreyKing 's post, I think you hit the nail on the head. I know that S18 will get his applications in one way or another. Maybe not the way I would do it, but that doesn’t really matter since it is his process. And I know in my heart that S18 is prepared for all that college brings. He is mature and responsible and has good judgment. I don’t really have any doubt that I could take him to any college anywhere in the country right now, leave him there, and he will get along just fine on his own. But even though I know that, I am not ready for him to leave the nest. And I think he has mixed feelings about leaving it. I know on some level, this struggle to get through the college application process is about each of us preparing for the separation.
Thanks again for lending your insight and perspective.
I’ve been having the same problem with my son. Told him he should have a draft of the common app essay by the end of the summer, offered to help brainstorm ideas, etc. It’s the end of the summer and nothing happened. He had plenty of time. Pretty frustrated. He’s not a bad writer, but I don’t want to rush or wait until the last minute.
Every step of the college process has been like pulling teeth. He hasn’t expressed any interest in the college search at all, hasn’t done any independent research. We have visited several colleges and he seems kind of interested when he’s there, but after we’re home, it’s like it never happened.
My son was like this. I think he was scared of going to college but couldn’t acknowledge or talk about the feeling. So he avoided the process as much as possible. I think he was trying to limit his emotional reactions by limiting his exposure to the cause. That might actually make sense in terms of dealing with his emotions, but unfortunately, it made it difficult to get things done.
This behavior seems fairly normal of a HS student. My S was no different. Great student, hard worker, etc but the college process, although he couldn’t wait to go, was just a hassle. He avoided it like the plague. He hates writing so writing the essays were like asking him to go for a root canal over and over again. Common App was just another tedious task. Frankly, couldn’t blame him. The reality is that all this stuff needs to get done. What I think makes it harder for these students is that they are also starting their senior year. There is so much emotion attached with it whether they realize it or not. It’s an exciting time for them but it can also be stressful. As a parent, my job was to keep him on task. And, it meant that I was constantly nagging. I couldn’t stand hearing my own voice after awhile! Lol! I can only imagine how he felt. It was all worth it when he signed onto the portal of his top choice and was accepted. Magically, all those bad memories where forgotten. Hang in there. You will get through this.
I haven’t read all posts, but I definitely had a similar son. I actually hurt our relationship through all the pushing and nagging I did during college acceptance season. I did some things well, and some not so well.
I made a list of Many colleges I thought he might be interested in. He narrowed it down to just a couple, and seemed to appreciate my effort, plus I made him apply to our state flagship. He pretty much did his essays the night they were due, despite much nagging, many not pleasant nights, etc. He wound up getting into each of the three top 40 schools he applied to (all tech/stem schools), plus or state flagship. Only Georgia Tech did not offer him money.
I think I was much more stressed than my son was, and I let my stress hurt our relationship. I should have let him do it on his schedule, and if he didn’t get in, well it would have been his issue. Now it’s five years later, and we still don’t have a good relationship.
If it makes any difference, I was much better the second time around
