<p>i am sure they do but not to the extent at which internationals do. its easier for colleges to determine if your app is fake or not in the united states but kids lets say from kazahkstan can easily pay to get documents forged. </p>
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<p>does that mean faking applications is ok? oh hey my friend is blind so its going to be harder for him to make money. i guess he should just rob a bank since like 1/4 ppl make X amount of money but only 1/9 blind people make that same amount of money. (example)</p>
<p>she wasn’t a legacy. she got it done professionally. Yeah, im not going to turn him in because… well… no point. </p>
<p>let’s not get too sarcastic about this though. im aware (as an intl student) that there seem to be some cheaters both in us pool and intl pool. But you know what? there are cheaters anywhere you go and they are going to succeed at times. at times, they’ll lose, but that doesn’t mean that we should. </p>
<p>The fact is, most applicants to top colleges don’t turn in completely original essays…many schools have the kids write their essays as part of English class and the teachers read them carefully and tell them to change things or the teachers change them themselves. And of course there is Spell Check/Grammar Check, which wasn’t available a generation ago.</p>
<p>What do you mean, “no point?” This applicant has defrauded Yale, you have proof, and you think there is no point in turning him in? Applications are a farce if they cannot be taken as credible.</p>
<p>“a person got into YALE UNIVERSITY this year by paying someone else to write his/her essays.”</p>
<p>It’s the “by” that is doubtful. The essays are but one element of about 15 elements in an app. package. Check out the CDS. </p>
<p>Possibly the committee, or a member or two, had doubts about authorship, but the other aspects overrode, and that the doubts were not of a convincing enough nature.</p>
<p>The personal statement is not some form of writing competition where the adcoms send it out to the english lit. department for grading. The SAT essay serves that purpose. Adcoms don’t want you to write some piece of poetry or the next novel. They just want to know something about you that is not reflected in the transcript and the essay is your best chance to get that across. Having somebody, either parent, teacher or friend review the essay for grammar and style is perfectly reasonable. You want it to serve its purpose effectively, and an essay full of spelling mistakes is not helpful. </p>
<p>The downside of having a third party ghostwrite your entire essay is that it may tell very little about who you are. Substance is more important than form. In the end the dots have to connect in the mind of the adcom so that he can be a better advocate for you when your file shows up in committee. The essay is just one small part of the whole picture and seldom makes or breaks an application. It would be very unusual to have the adcom read your essay in front of the full committee anyway.</p>
<p>Report that scum. I don’t want that person to attend the same university I’ll be going to. I’m usually a big opponent to snitching (I hate it), but this is just awful and completely unacceptable. </p>
<p>epiphany claimed it’s only 1 part of your 15-part application and won’t do any harm/foul. But this person cheated on this one-part. It’s like saying an applicant with perfect 4.0, 2400s, mind-blowing ECs but with a felony record. Oh that’s alright. Who cares if that person tried to kill someone or tried to steal money from a bank?</p>
<p>“epiphany claimed it’s only 1 part of your 15-part application and won’t do any harm/foul.”</p>
<p>^^ This is only one of several dozen times on CC I have been misquoted. I did NOT say that “it won’t do any harm/foul.” In fact, although my post time ran short because of my schedule, I was about to enter another post decrying the dishonesty & suggesting that the student be reported. (There have been reversals of admissions before, & expulsions, for various sorts of false identities, & a ghostwritten essay is a variant of false identity.)</p>
<p>Read again, oh non-critical-reader. I said, I’ll repeat: The OP in her language used a preposition that implied that the REASON for the admission was the essay. (“By” submitting an essay.) No. You have no proof of that. I have no proof of that. The OP has no proof of that. The applicant may have been admitted despite a ghostwritten essay, in addition to having a ghostwritten essay, etc. It was not a tolerable action on the part of the applicant. It does not prove that the essay is the deciding factor, or even that the essay was carefully considered, given possibly an impressive 14 other elements that the committee may have focused on. It proves that occasionally people do get fooled. (Did you just discover that?)</p>
<p>As cellardweller said:
“The essay is just one small part of the whole picture and seldom makes or breaks an application.”</p>
<p>It’s also not tolerable to report that a poster said something that was not said.</p>
<p>To the original question, since I didn’t go through the whole thread:</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s really an objective way you can tell…SAT scores don’t reveal much about an ability, teacher recs may not come from an english teacher or a humanities based, and even if there was a discrepancy it’s just possible that the student extraordinarily put a lot of time and effort into that one particular essay in terms of boosting admission chances. </p>
<p>Probably unlikely. But still I don’t think there’s a way to really tell straight apart if it’s paid/edited by professionals or not; many applicants to yale and etc i assume are good at writing…plus a lot more get in non-paid.</p>
<p>And how many people are actually successful with paying someone to write their ENTIRE essay? …Most I’ve heard of get rejected for discrepancies or not having a “genuine voice” or something like that.</p>
<p>I definitely won’t be able to afford something like this, so not an option for me, but it seems many of those are just simple edits and rephrasing suggestions to boost the essay if you’re not a good writer - not everyone’s a really good writer.</p>
<p>i wouldn’t want to pay someone to write, even if i was guaranteed in… it’s not my own achievement but someone else’s I wouldn’t feel good about it.</p>
<p>epiphany, I, likewise, was rushed, and jumped to a conclusion. For that, I apologize.</p>
<p>I think we both agree that we do not care if the essay was a deciding factor. What I care about is the applicant falsely filled out his/her application. I don’t even understand why we’re arguing about the preposition “by.” Who cares if the essay got the applicant in? It makes no difference if it helped or did not. The act of cheating itself is enough to discipline, not whether or not it affords a desired result.</p>
<p>And once again, I apologize for misquoting you.</p>
<p>and i think OP should report the cheater. when i first came here i was SHOCKED that people thought that “snitching” was wrong. i’m an international, so i thought it might be an aspect of American culture to think so… and i still think it’s weird. you’re reporting a cheater, just as you would a friend to the police for, let’s say, being a terrorist. is the latter scenario snitching too?</p>
<p>However, I only thought the preposition important because there’s been so much discussion on CC as to the relative importance of an essay, + the related cheating possibilities (such as on this thread) + the disparities between the persona of the student at school vs. potential (false) persona in an essay. Students justifiably want to know the weight. When reviewing the CDS of many colleges, it’s apparent that it’s not an “extremely important” element, overall, but just “somewhat” or merely “Important.” Thus, one can be admitted without an impressive essay but great “others”, yet the reverse is less often true. (OTOH, UC is a different matter, & for the reaches especially, a UC essay can make much more of a difference, particularly when it comes to elimination as opposed to admission.) All of the preceding is researchable information.</p>
<p>So while I do agree with you that dishonesty is dishonesty, & cannot be rationalized, I wanted the OP to understand that a ghostwritten essay would not necessarily in itself be the deciding element, & possibly was a neutral element in this case. In some cases, I’m told, an essay that disappoints (for any reason, including pretentiousness), accompanied by academics that impress, will be shrugged off as long as it doesn’t ring huge alarm bells. (“This student is mentally ill or at risk of being,” etc.)</p>
<p>HOWEVER (arguing against self), in a tight admissions market, where the appearance of seamless excellence can be decisive, I can also understand how disillusioning & frustrating it is to hear or observe these incidents from the sideline.</p>
<p>oOh so that’s why several think the top ivies are filled with pretentious people. Okay, well that is not true, but there are quite a few cases heard of people going to any length to get into a top school. That’s almost as bad as Blair Hornstine or Aleksy Vayner. Of course Blair got kicked out of Harvard, but I have no idea what became of Aleksy. Some people have no shame.</p>