Who said that admission officers can tell apart 'paid' and 'self-written' essays?

Applying to College
41

<p>I’m not a teacher or a admissions counselor. However, I have helped with writing courses a number of times. Sometimes a paper just strikes you as not matching the kid or any kid. One time I was reading a winning essay from some contest, and I just knew the kid did not write it. I later found out his mother was a writer, and when I read a few of her works–BINGO, it was pretty sure that she wrote or had a heavy hand in the writing of that thing. </p>

<p>Now, the thing is, am I really sure? Could I be wrong? Could I have missed some other ringers? All possibilities. Of course someone who has read hundreds of thousands of essays of college kids can detect the heavy hand of an adult editor or notice two voices in the essay pretty easily. The suspicion of a ghost writer can really hurt an applicant. It’s just not worth it to take such chances since 99% of the time, the essay is not going to hurt you and noone can ensure you an essay that does make a difference. The whole idea of the essay is how well it shows YOU.</p>

42

<p>Re Post 39:
However, I assume you didn’t see the essays. They could have been non-determinant in the outcomes (which again, doesn’t excuse the action). The fact that those essays were ghostwritten but the students were admitted anyway is a correlation, not a causation. Plenty of students, such as some on this page, have not done such a thing, or do not have access to nor could they afford such an option. They may be admitted to their ‘goal’ schools, or have been. Plenty of us parents on CC did not help our own children write essays, but many of them had excellent admissions results nevertheless. My own D’s were not “polished,” but they earned positive, handwritten comments from committee members. Other CC students have reported similarly.</p>

<p>The supposed “5-7” students may have gone through a lot of effort for nothing. (They might have been admitted without sibling input.)</p>

43

<p>I actually have, I like reading others essays and interpreting other peoples ideas and writing techniques. The essays were really good but I felt angry that they weren’t written by the seniors themselves. However they were all near the top students who had excellent SAT’s, excellent GPA’s and such.</p>

<p>As for me I didn’t even apply to Ivy League, my grades were decent and my essays where written by no one but myself. I still got into most of the schools I applied to, and got waitlisted/rejected from my dream school(AA) Which I will re-apply to next fall probably as a transfer. Nothing is worth ruining my future for.</p>

44

<p>Beejay, both of your paragraphs reinforce my points. :slight_smile: (i.e., even “really good” essays are usually in themselves non-determinant)</p>

<p>And good for you, too. I so agree with your last sentence.</p>

45

<p>

</p>

<p>didn’t aleksey vayner become known for faking his ibank application resume, rather than his application to yale?</p>

46

<p>No, I do not think that admissions officers can tell apart paid and self written essays, even within the context of individual applications. If a paid essay is recognizably “paid”, then whoever was paid to write or edit did not do a good job. And there is a large gap between paid work and self written work. I know kids who write their own essays but then get them edited maybe 1,000,000 times. I’ve personally seen the 1st edition of a rising senior’s essay and then helped revise his …maybe 30th revision (according to him). The 30th revision, even before my input, was gorgeously written, with a sincere voice too. The 1st sounded like it wasn’t even written by a native english speaker. I could tell that the work had been severely edited but that was only because i had seen some of his original writing. colleges do not (besides the sat essay and that is a completely different type of essay altogether). Getting edits is clearly allowed. But after a certain number of edits, essays lose their original (however flawed) voices and take on the polished, mature voices of dozens of well-spoken and older eyes. and there is no possible way for colleges to know to what extent essays are edited before they are submitted.</p>

<p>And I disagree that it’s possible to tell from the rest of the application that the student is not a good writer or not a mature writer. Unless an english teacher is cruel enough to write “This student is a poor writer.” And you know what… there are a lot of 700+ W /12 essay and 700+ CR who can’t really write creatively and introspectively at all. All it takes to get a 12 essay is a lot of practice and an understanding of what the grader is looking for.</p>

47

<p>Well obviously they can’t always tell. As username said, it’s like viruses. You think these professionals are so bad at their trade that they’d let their clients get caught? Bollocks! They’d go out of business if they did that. Now, as to whether or not you should report him-I say don’t. Even if you have proof. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t want somebody who paid someone to write his admission essay attending my college either, but a snitch is a snitch. No one likes snitches in the real world. Its not as if someone else is getting his spot if he gets rescinded. In effect, its a <em>victim less crime</em>. (and before people start jumping on this, I’ll preempt this by saying there is no real victim less crime, however, this is as victim less as it can get at this point) Also, even though on CC I may get flamed for this, you are going to mess up this guy’s life for the next few years if you did that. Seriously. I know people are like “he cheated, he brought it on himself”, but really, you’d be an ass if you did that. Even though I wouldn’t like a kid who pays others to write his college essay in my college, I’d take 10 of those over a kid who ruins another’s life for easily the next few years. Though, I don’t really think you (or most reasonable people) would do something like that, especially to somebody they know. And as cellardwellar said, chances are it wasn’t the essay that got him in. Granted, we don’t know if his own essay would have sucked hard and I’m not saying that excuses the wrongdoing. To future applicants, if you notice your friend doing something like this, I would try to prevent them from doing it first rather than putting yourself in a situation like this.</p>

48

<p>I made a thread but got no replies, it’s pretty similar but I was wondering if 2 students applying to different universities used the SAME essays and got in, would there be any way for universities to find out if the essays were re-used?</p>

<p>Like a joint plagiarism detecting system?</p>

49

<p>in communities such as those at highly accelerated or selective institutions, you’re gonna be surrounded by people who BSed their way through and really don’t deserve to be there. This frustrates me and really irritates me, but it’s a reality in these sorts of places. They’ll get what’s coming to them eventually, be it through the discovery of academic dishonesty or by being faced with their own incompetency. I eagerly await the day when the BSers I go to school with are given their just reward.</p>

50

<p>Your first paragraph is true, amb. However, that’s all the more reason that the non-edited (heavily) essays stand out as genuine. The adolescent voice (and I mean in a positive & respectful way!) is difficult to duplicate on the part of an adult. An essay that is slightly “un”-developed, or in other words, reflecting the true personal development of that stage in life, will be transparent for that. It is more that essays like that, which nevertheless accompany great records such as another poster was reporting (but with inauthentic essays) have the edge in admissions because of their genuine character. Again, in a competitive climate, why take the chance? </p>

<p>Case in point: In my d’s class, the #3 student, who was extremely close to students #1 and #2, was indulged (I wouldn’t say ‘spoiled,’ just had no wants) & happened also to be a singleton. She was an excellent writer; in fact, I’d say, outstanding. She needed no help writing her essays, or editing them. Yet she was also clueless about the relative wants & needs of the world at large, and her first submitted essays, while clever & sophisticated, reflected such an insulated world view. Her competition, for the same colleges, and with a very similar academic profile, had, well, less self-centered world views in their essays & better admissions results, since everything else was for all intents & purposes “equal” or parallel.</p>

<p>So if one doesn’t know one’s local competition extremely well, it can be a high-risk strategy to submit an over-edited or ghostwritten essay.</p>

<p>EDIT: I just realized that the above sounds slightly O/T. It is, but it comes to a similar conclusion. One is ghostwriting an essay, the other is the topic & tone of the essay. The point is still that since an essay can be more determinative in a competition featuring virtually identical levels of achievement, it is risky to play around with any ‘false note’ or ‘slick note’ in an essay – whether generated from oneself or generated from the outside. In such a competition, the essay that is clearly or most clearly written by the applicant – i.e, by a pre-college student – will tend to be viewed more favorably by a committee, if the tone is also appealing. Why take the chance on anything else?</p>

51

<p>Actually, do colleges use something similar to turnitin.com to detect plagiarism or do the adcoms need to spot it themselves - if they’ve heard two similar essays?
Because, what happens if two people use similar anecdotes or something x.x</p>

52

<p>i don’t get what’s wrong with snitching? could anyone tell me why?</p>

53

<p>Snitching on someone is just bad (I don’t want to explain it, for whatever I say can be taken to be immoral). But this is an exception.</p>

54

<p>I just think either way, it’s better to not live with a shadow over your head for the rest of your life. </p>

<p>College essays may be minor, but what if your success on this leads to more ambitious falsifications in the future?</p>

<p>I’m sure you’ve heard about MIT’s Marilee Jones: [Marilee</a> Jones - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilee_Jones]Marilee”>Marilee Jones - Wikipedia).</p>

<p>Did you think she thought her mistake in the past would catch up to her nearly 30 years later?</p>

55

<p>

</p>

<p>Because telling on your friends when they tell you they did a bad thing not meant for the world to know causes you to lose a friendship. Also, a lot of people are going to hear about it and not want to be close to you. Granted you could say your sense of doing ‘right’ is more important than having close friends, but do realize it is often not your place to tell on the person. It is not as if Yale had asked the OP, if your friend pays someone else to write the essay tell us. Because it is not the OP’s responsibility to tell on his/her friend that especially makes snitches hated.</p>

56

<p>

</p>

<p>all that is bad for you, but it is not wrong.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>why isn’t it my place? also, whether or not Yale wanted the information is irrelevant to and completely separate from the rightness or wrongness of snitching.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Hated, yes. But wrong?</p>

57

<p>You see, though, you can imagine how many people would not like a snitch or want to become one. Why, if you’d rather lose your friends just to make sure you did what you felt was “right” (and its not wrong to be quiet about it) be my guest. Furthermore, it’s not your place because it is none of your business. It may be your business if you’re applying to Yale in the same year as this person but the OP is not. Though, if you want to play semantics with me, I will say snitching is a bad idea, not wrong, but a terrible idea. And, most of us think that it would be wrong to execute a terrible idea. But I hope you can understand why very few reasonable people would snitch. And if you don’t believe me, look at how very few (if any) kids get rescinded from college. If we are to assume that all of them were rescinded because of cheating (which they weren’t) you’d be pretty naive to think that this constitutes up to 10%, heck even 1% of known, provable cheaters.</p>

58

<p>

what is right and what is wrong? In my opinion, if it’s bad for everyone including yourself, it IS wrong.</p>

59

<p>for all those reasons above, that’s why i won’t tell on the person. this thread was just written to raise an awareness that paid essays do sometimes get through and that admissions people should be more aware of it. (although it maybe extremely hard to tell apart these essays).</p>

<p>please note that in the original post, I had no intention of pulling the person out from her school. </p>

<p>but im glad how this thread is progressing to discuss various morals that we face in our society…</p>

60

<p>It is unfortunate, but there are always people who are able to “game” the system and win. I guess the more interesting information would be, what the rate is of those who make it versus those who do not. There are people who cheat their entire lives and seem to get away with it, and others who get famously caught in the end. I think and hope for most it boils down to personal integrety and the fact that if you don’t really have what it takes it will get you in the end.</p>