How widespread is cheating?

[freshlysqueezed]

I’m reading more and more articles on cheating the college admissions process. How common is this?

https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/ywxyz5/i-write-college-essays-for-rich-indians-applying-to-ivy-leagues

https://nypost.com/2018/05/02/rich-parents-are-using-doctors-notes-to-help-kids-cheat-the-sats/

[SatchelSF]

Who knows how widespread it is? I know people who have have had their kids’ essays actually written by a consultant, and I have of course heard about parents shopping for ADHD diagnoses to get extra time on the tests. So, I bet it’s pretty common in certain demographics.

Erica Meltzer, a well known admissions counselor and test prep writer, has addressed cheating on the essay and really the whole phony process of “holistic” admissions:

Yes, admissions officers can tell when an applicant has been helped by someone who does not understand the ins and outs of the college essay…

The operative phrase, though, is unfamiliar with how college essays typically sound.

What admissions officers cannot know – and have no reliable way of finding out – is how many essays they’ve looked at that have been massaged, shall we say, by adults who are familiar with how college essays typically sound. Adults who know exactly how college essays typically sound and can convincingly channel, or even replicate, a 17-year-old’s voice – warts and all. Adults who are paid thousands of dollars precisely because they possess this skill.

https://thecriticalreader.com/biggest-lie-college-admissions/

[zannah]

Schools provide workshops on cheating and plagiarism and faculty, staff and administration are quite vigilant. Cheating is a problem in high school as well as in admissions tests. Students in CC also complain about cheating when they were only helping other students, or accidentally looked back to an earlier test section had a cell phone on the desk that rang…It seems to me that cheating is a major problem considering the number of students who say they cheated knew someone who did, complain that they were engaging in permissible behavior and so on, yet are not the universe of cheating and plaigarizing. Hope cheaters are able to fulfill job requirements on their own!