<p>exactly
10char</p>
<p>quantmech - writing essays while inebriated sounds like a cool idea if you can still make sense of it while sober! :p</p>
<p>The concept of a superscore on the SAT has been around for some time. I’d like to suggest the “infrascore,” which is the sum of the lowest scores on each section of the SAT. Then, I’d like to further suggest that the SAT score required to be considered qualified for admissions is the infrascore of the people who work in the admissions office.</p>
<p>One of the partners in an office in which I worked definitely worked very hard on his daughter’s essays for college. I know because we shared a secretary and the secretary did the edits. The girl was admitted to an Ivy and he continued to edit - to the point of rewriting - at least some of her papers throughout the 4 years. She went on to med school and is now a doctor. I don’t doubt how smart she is because of this. He was the better writer. It does surprise me that she allowed him to do it, but, given the family dynamics, I don’t know that she felt she had much of a choice.</p>
<p>Wow this thread moves fast!</p>
<p>bear and dogs – I think oldfort’s post about her mother was a response to my post # 372 – about rumors of SAT cheating in Japan and China.</p>
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<p>The super-reach super-selective schools have more “really smart kids” applying than the size of their freshman classes. I.e. if they want to admit 1,000, but have 5,000 applicants whose raw stats indicate that they can handle the work, then it is unlikely that admitting an “essay cheater” will result in admitting someone who fails to handle the work.</p>
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<p>When you have many times more applicants with A grades in everything (including English) and 700+ scores on each SAT section than your admission class, this type of check does not really help.</p>
<p>I doubt there is anyone here openly condoning outright cheating (someone else writing the applicant’s essay). However, there appears to be disagreement at the boundary (e.g. how much help to the essay writing applicant is considered “cheating”?) as well as how widespread practices that would be considered outright cheating are.</p>
<p>Wow, definitely catching up on this thread is hard! </p>
<p>The joke in our family, which consisted of just my D and I, is that I hadn’t been able to help her with her homework since 3rd grade. Of course not totally true, but somewhat. If I had written my D’s essays, she would be flipping burgers right now. </p>
<p>posted by bears and dogs</p>
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<p>You shouldln’t assume that all parents “help” their kids on these things. I helped my kid with secretary duties for UG and I continue to do this for med school apps. But never have I done/helped/assisted anything academically for her. Most kids do it on their own. We are only hearing the stupid is as stupid does stories here.</p>
<p>Btw, what is it with your romcom with a certain poster here? Maybe you are just trying to keep the thread thriving?</p>
<p>bears and dogs- I usually am good at figuring out what people are saying and why they have certain viewpoints, but you have totally lost me. Your posts might as well be in a different language because I have no idea what point you are trying to make.</p>
<p>I can’t understand the posts, either. Different language - sounds logical to me.</p>
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<p>Funny, my thought was Mrs. Robinson</p>
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<p>Again:</p>
<p>(1) the exceptions are largely hearsay. When a student or a parent admits to, or brags about, “helping” or ‘being helped,’ “editing,” “writing” or “rewriting,” this is third-party “data” at best, and there is no check on the veracity of such statements, nor their scope. </p>
<p>(2) “helping,” “editing,” “writing,” mean different things to those who claim to have done so. Helping can be a general suggestion offered orally. Editing can mean suggesting paragraph divisions, or it can mean using the editor’s words, not the applicant’s. “Writing” can mean anything from suggesting a specific rephrase for one sentence (with the applicant accepting & submitting that), or it can mean creating (authoring) the essay.</p>
<p>(3) The exceptions tend to stand out, and those then magnified quantitatively to an imagined level that does not exist. </p>
<p>(4) When it comes to the college essay about personal experience, personal self-reflection, etc., it is extremely hard for a parent old enough to have a student that age, to write it from scratch. They can brag all they want. I’ll believe it when I see it. All such attempts I have seen have been dismal failures; as I said before, many times the student himself or herself sees that and quietly submits her or his own original essay instead, with parent never being the wiser for it and believing until death that the parent was responsible for the successful college admission. I have seen an occasional heavily-parent-edited essay about the student’s first-person experience or self-concept, which was submitted, and in each case the student was denied admission. The essay was embarrassing.</p>
<p>(5) Admissions officers are a lot quicker at spotting the adolescent-vs-adult voice, despite the volume of apps, than most people here realize.</p>
<p>Yes, I am sure there are the occasional clever parent writers who manage to hide their adult voice and an adult experience which cannot be eradicated. I’m sure a few of those go undetected because the parent is bright enough to pull it off, which also generally means the student has inherited a high-IQ gene pool like his or her peer admits who did write their own essays (ucbalumnus’ point).</p>
<p>Wow—so clearly, then, many must agree that Ivy League admissions does have something to do with “a competition of excellence”, otherwise, why would some want to ‘cheat’ by having others write a personal statement for them? If there was no excellence or merit involved, then it wouldn’t make a difference if the essay was great or mediocre.</p>
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<p>Speculation. There is no way you can know this. You think you can figure out who has written what but there is no definitive way to tell. </p>
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<p>Or, maybe you were wrong and there was no parent involvement. More speculation. </p>
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<p>Who is reporting this - the students?</p>
<p>I sortof compare Ivy admissions to what has happened with selection to Harvard Law Review over time. When my father was admitted all positions were based on grades given in class from Harvard’s professors. He called it true meritocracy-as true a system as he had ever experienced.(Ofcourse that was also a time when each and every student was class ranked) When my brother was admitted part of the Review was based on grades, part based on a writing competition. Now only 14 of 44 positions are based on grades and competition, 20 from the competition, and 10 completely discretionary. See the same thing at top Ivy’s-about a third of admissions are truly academically gifted kids-the rest who knows.</p>
<p>Can someone please give an example of a ghost-written essay that would result in one 4.0/2200 Ivy league applicant being admitted over another?</p>
<p>If the content/topic of the essay is more important than the style (which makes sense in light of SAT writing), then anything written that is so unique and amazing as to be the pivotal reason for admission should be corroborated in some way by another part of the application. No?</p>
<p>(I’m assuming that the Ivies are not blown away by Chicken Nugget eaters…)</p>
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<p>Yeah, all those lightweights getting on the Law Review is a real problem. Or were you referencing any particular person?</p>
<p>back to the issue of gostwriting essays and such-- anyone remember this incident? [Wal-Mart</a> Heiress Returns Diploma - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/19/national/main956890.shtml]Wal-Mart”>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/19/national/main956890.shtml)
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<p>The roommate did her homework for 3.5 years for 20K? That´s really cheap. How did Paige do on her tests? Did her roommate take tests for her too? </p>
<p>Maybe it is because D1 was a math major, her homework counted very little toward her grade - 2 prelims and the final, that´s it. If she didn´t do her problem sets then she wouldn´t be able to pass prelims.</p>
<p>This was back in 2001-004 or so. Maybe that was the going rate back then :)</p>
<p>IIRC, the classmate was paid to write her papers and do her homework. Since Laurie was majoring in communications, maybe this meant researching news stories and writing papers. Who knows. Here’s another article [Arena</a> Won’t Bear Name of Wal-Mart Heiress - U.S. & World - FOXNews.com](<a href=“http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139553,00.html]Arena”>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139553,00.html) Also, wonder if she had take-home tests as well. The honor code didnt seem to bother them too much :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>She also said that “she dropped out of USC because she couldn’t afford the tuition.”</p>