I don’t really have any advice as my parents are still asking to see my essays knowing I’ve submitted ten of my twelve applications, but I just wanted to say I really feel for you and hope you love the school where you end up! Definitely don’t give up because if your dad is driving you mad now at least with college you’ll be away for nine months. Truly good luck!
Apply to UPenn (deadline today - submit YOUR essay as soon as you’re done ).
Apply to Georgetown. Kenyon ? Dickinson ? Carleton? Macalester ? St Olaf ?
Good colleges with later deadlines.
I am very sorry this happened. You’ve been thrown into adulthood : your father is fallible, he can be wrong, he doesn’t necessarily act in your best interest, his interest can be opposite yours.
It’s intensely hurtful to discover this at this point, all at once, at a time as stressful already.
You may also want to consider colleges with free applications or ones with later deadlines like @MYOS1634 has suggested. I am very sorry this has happened to you OP! This sounds like a horrible situation because it is hard to feel like you are being inauthentic in one of the most important decisions you’ve had to make. If it comes to it, I do think it may be worth sending the additional email explaining what happened and submitting your own essays. Good luck!
Here are my stats:
Applied: 11/10
Decision: 12/29
Review Admit
Major: Business
Did you get in: yes
Class Rank:330/649
ACT: 26
New SAT: 1220
I cannot stress this enough, but never ever give up! I never thought of getting in but i had just applied to see. I was very surprised I got in, and do not know why or how I got in. I hope you apply and hope the best for your decision!
to the OP. Definitely do not give up. Just try your best and apply where you feel you will do well.
Good luck.
Here’s hoping that come April, you can take a few deep breaths, weigh any options, and then consider having a heart to heart talk with both your parents. No matter what, you will soon be living your own life and making your own decisions. There are controlling parents out there. There are worse than that too. Just remember that your father’s actions are born from love, which is unfortunately manifesting in a dismissive, sarcastic, authoritarian way (it’s probably more common than you realize). You will always be his son, but you must also be/learn to be/grow into your own adult person. It can take time to find the right ‘age’ when both of you can accept that, but you will arrive at the place you need to be in the end. But perhaps I’m over-reading this battle over essays and interpreting it as something larger (you did mention that you will no longer see your father the same way again—these negative experiences can sometimes be a spur to adulthood, in my opinion. Silver lining).
I empathize with you completely. My dad hated that I wrote my essays close to the deadline and he thinks these essays aren’t supposed to tell a story or be creative or anything. Worse enough, English is not even his native language so there were always plenty of grammar mistakes. He wasn’t as controlling as your dad seems but he just wrote them for me and expected me to send them. I didn’t actually let any of family or friends read my essays and I usually just spent a good few hours alone in my room crafting them. I refused to submit my dad’s essays and did my own no matter how much he pressured/yelled at me. It’s worked out so far because, while getting rejected from some scholarships, I did get into UIUC’s CS program. I’m so sorry it’s this late in the game and your dad did this to you. Be brave. Don’t give up. Do what feels right. Don’t let someone control your future in a way you don’t want.
p.s. My dad ALWAYS over exaggerates time also haha. Just know youre not alone.
@pocrocodro
I am so sorry to hear what happened. Your essays were excellent.
I have 4 suggestions:
- Make an appointment with your GC (without your parents) ASAP and sit there while he/she reads this thread. Tell him/her that you are the OP so what you are up against will be crystal clear.
- Ask your GC to reach out to every school your father submitted to with a letter of explanation and your own essays.
- In addition to #2, email every school as well and submit all copies of your essays/supplemental questions.
- For those for which you have alumni interviews, please take a minute to explain what your father did and ask if the alumni interviewer will include a note in the report about it. Other alumni interviewers and I will be glad to coach you on what to say.
I also hope you will submit to Georgetown. Will you please post the list of where you applied so other posters can make additional school recs to you?
Hang in there. We are rooting for you!
ETA - does anyone know if the OP can contact someone at the Common App to have the essays switched out globally?
OP, one more note - it may be worth contacting someone at the Common App and letting them know that an unauthorized user submitted essays in your name. I cannot imagine that the support desk at the CA could ignore an email request for essay substitution if you were to use that exact language. Here is the link to send an email. And you may want to get someone from your school involved to back your story up. Keep us posted.
https://appsupport.commonapp.org/ics/support/TSFolder.asp
Adding @Hanna - do you have any experience with the situation at hand?
UA Huntsville isn’t your state flagship. Alabama is. Didn’t you apply there? You would have gotten a huge scholarship. Although you will likely get a larger one at Huntsville.
Wishing you the best. My husband was like this with son 1. He edited the voice out of some of the essays, the ones to the schools he husband cared about. And S didn’t get in. The essays husband didn’t touch? S got in.
I second the idea of you going somewhere you can pay for yourself so you can make your own choices.
^^^ OP is not from AL.
@pocrocodro How are you doing?
Hi, everyone. Many, many apologies for being absent from this thread for so long. I don’t know when this post will appear as my posts have to get approved for some reason, causing a delay between when I actually post versus when it shows up. Nonetheless, I am sorry for leaving you all in the dark. I did read all the comments a while back, but I have been taking care of business with the extraordinary help you all have provided.
In summary, my dad agreed to let me submit whichever essays I wanted for all the post 1/2 deadlines after I made a final, earnest plea to him. However, all the 1/1 schools (n=6) were his essays. I spent the first week of school back from break trying to get a meeting with my GC, and I did. She really is an incredibly nice person, but she also is new on the job (started my freshman year), so she wasn’t sure what to really do. She emailed me after our meeting saying that nothing can be changed, but I can try reaching out to the schools (Emory, GA Tech, P’ton, Columbia, ND, Brown) individually to adjust my essays. I spent the past week consulting some endlessly generous members (@GnocchiB, @Lindagaf, @Fishnlines29) to get advice on what sort of note I should add to each of these essays. It really took a while to format everything properly, to adjust the essays, to convert into PDFs, but I just finished emailing all the schools yesterday. So far, Emory, Princeton, Brown, and Notre Dame have replied saying they attached the PDF with the essays to my file, and for that I am extremely thankful. GA Tech, however, said that they do not take supplementary documents but that a new CA essay would likely not change anything due to “holistic” admissions. I will take their word for it.
Now, to answer specific questions:
@EKolin My mother isn’t really aware of the whole admissions process, so she mostly agrees with what my dad says because my dad is so confident when he speaks.
@ChasingMerit I did apply to Georgetown just in time!! Thank you so much for that suggestion.
@CathJR Thank you so much for your kind words. 
I wish you the best.
@MYOS1634 I did apply to UPenn, but it was a school that my dad really wanted me to apply to because he really wishes I become a business major even though I do not like business at all. He forced me to submit his 650-word supplement to Wharton, but I do not have the time to rewrite it and I do not care much for Wharton, so I’m leaving UPenn alone. Thank you for all the suggestions on those colleges. As stated earlier, I did apply to Georgetown and I hope I will get in!
@shawnspencer @MassDaD68 Thank you very much!!!
@ChartresBlue I really do hope I have options come April. Either way, my philosophy is that if I tried my hardest, I have nothing to worry about. Although I do feel like I had some lapses (i.e I just noticed a couple of grammar errors in my CA essay lol), I feel I put all I could into this process and that I’ll end up wherever I deserve to end up. My dad is a very caring person, but his care can morph into control oftentimes. That being said, what I stated earlier about seeing my dad differently was borne out of the frustration of the moment. The truth is that he has always been this way, and what happened was just another manifestation that was bound to happen given our conflicting personalities.
@superbowser12 I am so so so so happy to hear your story, and I commend you on your tenacity to refuse to submit your father’s essays. That was a strength that I did not have, but you braved through it. Congratulations on getting into CS at UIUC! It’s a really awesome program if you end up going there. applause
@Wien2NC My state flagship is not UA, although I did apply to Huntsville for the full tuition.
@Lizardly Thanks for your well wishes. Really refreshing to hear how your son got in with his own voice.
Overall, I’d just like to thank all of you once again from the bottom of my heart for all the help that you’ve provided. This entire experience was unforgettable, and I can’t imagine how I would have gotten through this without your brilliant advice. Special shoutout to @Lindagaf and @GnocchiB, who patiently and brilliantly edited essays and gave amazing advice when time was running out. You two are amazing.
I will definitely update this thread when decisions are released. 
Hi everyone, quick update!
UMich was due today, and sadly my father reverted to his old ways, presenting me with a list of essays that were so “adult” my jaw dropped. At this point, I’ve simply given up hope in this 1984-like dystopia. When he asks, “Are you fine with these essays?” I simply nod to get it over quickly; there’s nothing I can do. Yet, what remains shocking is the complete lack of shame he feels, with frequent comments such as “You would completely lost in this process without me.” Gosh, what a narcissist! He even forced me to submit all the recs (n=6) that I had gotten from teachers.
Anyway, I find it kind of hilarious that yesterday when finishing up my own essays, I had found the regional AO email in advance and had prepared the email to send in case my father went nuclear. Also quite ironic is the fact that my dad felt so responsible that he did FAFSA and CSS for me the day before I planned to get started! I guess this presumptive control has its benefits.
That’s all for now, just wanted to keep you all in the loop. I’ll be sending my own essays to my AO for UMich tonight and hope he accepts my plea. First decision comes out Pi day for MIT. Can’t wait.
Good luck to you during the rest of this crazy process @pocrocodro. It is such a shame that your dad continues to act that way, not only because it is ridiculous and unethical, but because you are an excellent writer. You have a great future ahead of you and having some distance from home will really help a lot. Hang in there!
@pocrocodro , what responses did you receive when you submitted your own essays to your other schools? Anything in addition to what you already reported?
@elena13 Thank you so much! I can’t wait for college.
@Lindagaf Thanks for checking in. No, nothing else changed. Just to add some detail to what I posted earlier… I uploaded to the Applicant Portal for Princeton and emailed Princeton, and the lady simply responded that it was “added to my file.” Emory thanked me for letting them know and saying they added it to my file. GT Tech said they were simply not allowed to take it and apologized for denying me the opportunity, but they said it would not change my decision due to the holistic nature of their decisions. Brown thanked me and said they appreciated me reaching out and would add the essays to my file. Notre Dame AO had an automatic response which included an email to send any additional files. I sent the essays to that email but got no response.
I feel these all are pretty generic responses, and so I have asked my counselor to personally call them. She said she would do so next week, but I fear it is too late since the deadline was a full month ago. Either way, I hope that they will understand the situation and not think I am simply the kid who knowingly submitted work that was not his. That’s what I have feared the most…
I feel like I owe you all some good news, though! School is going well, and I’m getting really close with this girl I’ve liked for a while hehe :). Other than that, I’m resolved to stop worrying about everything in this ugly (at least for me) admissions process. As Kundera adopted from Beethoven, “Es muss sein (It must be),” this way. For some reason. For some purpose. I guess I’ll find out in a few months.
Oh, man, you’re not studying calculus right now with her are you?! =;
@Fishnlines29 Lol, I wish
I was hoping I could get some advice from you all about how to frame my LOCI for Harvard. In summary, I submitted my original EA application with my dad’s essay, gave them my real essay a couple of days later but only said that the essay did not represent “who I am”, and a week before decisions came out, told them of the reality of the situation.
I’m having trouble assembling the LOCI and I’m questioning whether I should address the essay situation and how it’s changed me. Of course, I want to keep it short and also tell them of some progress I’ve made extracurricularly.
If I should mention the essay stuff, how should I do so?
Thanks everyone!