<p>but KV ADMITTED that she did it. So what is your point? That even her admission is a lie?</p>
<p>Is there another thread in which to discuss the issue of what adcoms think about coached and packaged applicants? I’d really like to hear the scoop from people in the know, and whether or not this is an underground issue for THEM. Any feedback is appreciated. I am not considering hiring a counselor, but I must say that I get a gentle but constant social pressure from others who do, and I’d like to know if I’m being naive and hurting my daughter’s chances or if I should stay my ground. Thanks in advance for replies. Or I’ll move this to another thread if it exists. Thanks!</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>Then the KV situation is more like Reggie Bush than someone turning pro right out of hgh school, i.e. Kobe Bryant. His parents did not get the alleged special lease deal until after he was a sophomore and a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy.</p>
<p>Overall, the restrictions on athletes is much greater than on other students, writers or otherwise.</p>
<p>Another theory - let’s say there was a ghostwriter working for Alloy who was fed up with their job (poor pay, tough deadlines, deadend job, no recognition) and they were handed the Opal Mehta book to write. Let’s say they were planning on leaving the job anyway and they were a little jealous of rich girl Kaavya. So they decided to make their job easy and borrow from other books (they have nothing to lose). Then when the first allegations of plagerism come out and Kaavya gets the first phone calls on her cell phone, she obviously says, as reported, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The first allegations were for just a few passages of plagerism - maybe not so bad. Kaavya’s spent the previous week getting lots of media coverage for her stunning debut novel for which she’s taking all the credit. Pretty hard at this point to say, “I didn’t actually write the book.” Because, either way, it makes her a liar. Actually, this is a pretty good plot for a story!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But of course. On the Harvard Forum of CC. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=182624[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=182624</a></p>
<p>Investerscooter asks:
“I’d like to know if I’m being naive and hurting my daughter’s chances or if I should stay my ground.” with regard to hiring a college counselor.</p>
<p>I am a college counselor and I am also a parent. I don’t see my role as a college counselor as “increasing” a student’s chances. I see it as offering assistance to those who might not otherwise be able to or willing to navigate the college admissions quagmire on their own. Some parents/students are not knowledeable about the process, some don’t have the time, some don’t feel comfortable working with their own children on this, some clearly don’t read CC (LOL) or WHATEVER reason…find they wish assistance in selecting appropriate colleges and how to go about the admissions process. I don’t get kids into college. They have to be qualified. But I can guide them to colleges that are good matches, assess their chances, and take them through every step of the process. I’m more of a facilitator who helps the student to achieve her goal of finding the best colleges for herself and to achieve a succesfful admissions outcome.</p>
<p>I can help in every aspect of the process…including assisting the student to present themselves in the best possible way. That is NOT the same as what we are talking about on this thread which has to do with “packaging” and “molding” a student early on…telling them what activities they should do…even assisting in procuring the opportunities and so forth. An independent counselor is more of someone with expertise who you might hire like with other services…but these same things can be done by very knowledgeable and involved parents as well. Often school guidance counselors are assigned too many students, as well as many reponsibilities other than college counseling, so families may find a need to work with someone who can give attention every single day step by step through the process, and who has expertise that they may lack themselves or not have time to acquire. A counselor can even be an “unbiased” person in your child’s process when at times, a student and parents’ ideas about colleges may clash. A counselor just helps facilitate the planning, exploring of options and careful preparation to meet the student’s best interests. It is like having a resource and guide 24/7.</p>
<p>I think this is a different issue than some things being discussed in this thread where a counselor may “create” or “mold” the student into something in order to get into a particular college. A typical college counselor doesn’t do applications…doesn’t do things FOR the student. The counselor is a resource, guide and facilitator. It is the student who still has to get in. But the college admissions process can be overwhelming to many students and parents and some find it helpful to have someone to assist and guide them through the process. If the goal is to hire a counselor to get the student into a college that he/she would not otherwise be able to be admitted at on his/her own…that is ill advised. A college counselor basically can evaluate a student’s backgrouond, guide in the selection of appropriate and desired colleges, and guide the student in every aspect of the application and admissions process. Many knowledgeable CC parents do this all the time on their own with their children. Some may choose to hire a consultant to assist in the process, like with anything else. Others have a college counselor on staff at their private school and that’s enough. Others just really want help from somone with expertise, as it is overwhelming. A college counselor shouldn’t be seen as “an advantage” to get the child into college. It is more of supportive assistance with the process. That is not necessarily the same, however, as the “packaging” of a student being described on this thread for huge amounts of money, often starting years ahead of senior year.</p>
<p>I was envisioning a scenario similar to Vango’s. May I “quote” you?</p>
<p>firefly - I’m wondering when she’s going to appear on Oprah with the true story. Things are so bad for her now (cancelled contract, bad rep), she has nothing to lose. She could really play up the “young, naive and got manipulated” side of it. I would imagine it is nearly impossible for her to continue at Harvard…imagine every professor scrutinizing every word you write for the next couple of years. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up going to school in another country, maybe even India.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/business/media/01link.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/01/business/media/01link.html</a></p>
<p>This article’s Helen Keller example supports my hypothesis that is possible for someone with a photographic memory to mentally imprint many passages from various sources and unknowingly use them at a later time (without recalling the sources themselves). This, to me, is a much more plausible explanation than imagining Kaavya going through various previously read books in order to lift specific lines and reuse them almost verbatim.</p>
<p>Yeah, but Helen Keller was also a deaf and mute 12 year old who learned language relatively late in childhood. For her to internalize a story someone had told her a few years earlier, back when she was still acquiring language (which, if I remember correctly, was the case with her plagiarism) is different from a Harvard freshman internalizing something she had read in the past several years.</p>
<p>I understand how someone might internalize an idea, or a plot twist, or a particular phrase, but 30 paragraphs from two books? And now several more from others? </p>
<p>Actually, the more I hear about this situation, the more I am convinced that she did plagiarise. Everyone was telling her to write in the mold of these other authors, and she learned her lesson too well. In fact, she probably justified herself the same way some others are trying to justify her behavior - all of these books are derivative; there is no monopoly on, say, a scene about the narrator’s childhood memories in India, or one that mocks the materialism of the popular clique. While at times, the language is exactly the same, a lot of the passages seem to borrow sentence structures and themes, but change the language - something that suggests to me that she may have deluded herself into believing that she had changed enough that she was merely using the other book as guidence, not copying from it. She also may have banked on the idea that McCafferty’s books (like Opal Mehta would have been), were a type conducive to a quick read, not laborious analysis. Even if many readers noticed similarities, the chances that they would have an acute enough memory to recognize it as plagiarism may haave seemed to her unlikely, and the chances that they would recognize the extent of it enough to expose her even slimmer.</p>
<p>I even wonder if she had initially put some of these passages in as “filler” in order to meet deadlines, and intended to change them later during the editing process. However, once they were in there and the editors liked them, it would have been difficult to change without admitting their source - so she justified it to herself, or made minor changes that she convinced herself were sufficient.</p>
<p>It’s pretty clear to me, consistent with news reports on this issue, with the statements by CC participants knowledgeable about the publishing industry, and admitted or undenied by the young “author,” that the author got MAJOR outlining help from the book-packaging company, and then she filled in her outline spots with adapted (= plagiarized) passages from a variety of books she had at hand. She is, of course, free to offer a different explanation of what happened, but I absolutely won’t believe the unconscious internalization explanation.</p>
<p>She was just very naive --really very young. She did not know, as I would know, that this kind of literary identity theft would be widely discovered. Those of is inside publishing know that no one but no one goes undiscovered for something like this. But this young woman --just 17-- was too inexperienced to know. You know even an UNETHICAL person would have avoided the plagiarism because of the absolute eventuality of discovery. I do believe that she didn’t know it would come down like this --and that she may have approached many aspects of life this way and gotten away with it on the small stage. When you write nationally, even the tiniest error will get an avalanche of letters. A pro would know that.</p>
<p>
I don’t think her youth is an excuse. I’m sixteen, certainly not a Harvard student, and I think that’s obvious.</p>
<p>It isn’t an excuse for her ethics but an explanation for her poor strategy. My point is that a more experienced persion, even if unethical, would have avoided that form of theft because the repercussions were knowable. In general I agree: Her youth does not excuse her lack of ethics. However, her youth may explain her personal stupidity even though many if not most young people, like yourself, would find it obvious.</p>
<p>The analogy with Hellen Keller was not appropriate:
HK was blind & deaf, depended almost entirely on others to teach her books & stories at a young age.
If she really intensely loved a story (& she would have known/read far fewer stories), it’s much more plausible that she could internalize it.
She certainly did not copy/internalize from numerous sources.</p>
<p>I remember high school teachers defining plagiarism as using 4 or 5 consecutive words that exactly matched someone else’s work. Maybe Kaavya was working on that type of assumption. I don’t think that she ever had five identical words in a row. However, her similarities were unacceptable for professional writing.</p>
<p>I posted this link on the other parent thread on this subject. It should give you an idea of what types of literary actions constitute plagarism.</p>
<p><a href=“Student Guide to Academic Integrity | Office of the Dean of the College”>Student Guide to Academic Integrity | Office of the Dean of the College;
<p>Boy. Where could students have ever gotten the idea that plagiarism isn’t that big of a deal. Ummm. Here? </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060511/NEWS/605110348/1006[/url]”>http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060511/NEWS/605110348/1006</a></p>
<p>Yet more on this story: </p>
<p><a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060511/ap_en_ot/young_author[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060511/ap_en_ot/young_author</a></p>