<p>I am not sure if a bland essay full of pablum would excite enough attention to call in “The Admissions Police” - if indeed the app. got into the admit or possible admit pile for whatever reason in the first place. The problem is what to do with a personal statement that comes off as too slick, sophisticated, or too adult (and I don’t mean too mature at all), packaged etc. that raises a flag. Yes, it is often difficult to discern a real voice in many of these stock essays but that is the challenge - to find a balance between voice and content and then weed out the disingenuous. In case of doubt, even a warmed-over oatmeal SAT essay could serve as a check on cheating.</p>
<p>The bland essays full of pablum were also full of misspellings and grammatical errors. The CB thought this was allowable.
Presumably the exemplary essays all earned a 12 or at least a very high score. There would be no reason for an adrep, seeing this high score to reach for the actual essay. But If I were to read an essay by an applicant who claimed to enjoy reading Wittgenstein but could not spell grammar, I’d be leery. But not under the guidelines of the CB.</p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>Thank heaven for spell check! I’d hate to be judged by my spelling. I think that adding the third leg to the SAT I was a good idea for just this reason. Obviously, the quality of writing that would be expected with unlimited time is different than that expected in a half hour, under pressure, but some rough consistency is a reasonable expectation.</p>
<p>Marite, I assume that most adcoms want to give applicants the benefit of the doubt and believe that they are reading the “real deal”. I also assume that these readers of thousands upon thousands of apps realize and appreciate the great gulf that separates a rough draft effort from a polished piece of prose. I also assume they want and expect a polished, effective, and even stunning finished product. Yet, if there is something in that polished effort that raises a flag then that bland SAT essay might show just if that gulf is wide enough to signal a breach of integrity.</p>
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<p>Sure you know – it hurt them. I had the same problem with WashDadJr. I strongly recommend abandoning essay requirements and substituting math proof challenges.</p>
<p>The misspellings bother me less than the grammatical errors and the total lack of creativity. The grading rubrics really do not allow readers much leeway to make distinctions between a totally unimaginative and even factually incorrect essay and one that may be written in telegraphic style but shows promises of brilliance. </p>
<p>As I said, my beef is not with the essay requirement; it’s with the grading rubrics. And this, too, is what causes various adcoms to hold back on using the new SAT essay.</p>
<p>Curious: In my French school, 5 misspellings on any piece of writing automatically led to a zero; it did not matter if it was for French literature or math. The bac exam required many essays.<br>
I know of students who’ve managed to graduate from top schools in this country still unable to spell grammar or distinguish between there and their.</p>
<p>Washdad: LOL! My S is not a bad writer. But I’m sure he’d have welcomed writing math proofs over the essay.</p>
<p>WashDad - math proof challenges? Ouch!</p>
<p>Marite - I think for most students the rubric of “admit”, “defer”, “deny” is bad enough without thinking about adcoms actually grading personal statements which are supposed to be - if nothing else - honest.</p>
<p>The need to have an Admissions Police to weed out students who pad ECs, use paid consultants, and fudge essays is just another symptom of the horrendous pressure on students to compete not just against others but themselves - to stand out - even if it means to use botox - because the message is precisely that no matter how excellent unless they have the “it” factor they just won’t make the cut.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen of essay scoring in standardized tests–and essay contests–the safe and pedestrian workmanlike effort will always win out over the rougher, more ambitious essay with flashes of brilliance. They like what I think of as “good girl” essays.</p>
<p>I agree that there must be some way of judging the extent to which application essays have been edited to a fare-thee-well by someone else. But the SAT-essay is just not it. I totally agree with Consolation’s post #28.</p>
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<p>Should not we not ask WSJ to check their own … essays? </p>
<p>Does the author think that the SAT essays can be written by proxy when he STATES “their SAT essays – more or less guaranteed to be their own work?” Where does the less stand for.</p>
<p>Most everyone knows that the comparison between the SAT essay and the essays for college applications is a flawed and futile exercise, as the process and objective are totally different. </p>
<p>Jon Weinbach’s effort shows how easy it isto remain naive and misinformed.</p>
<p>Like everything else, the SAT can be prepped for (and this is not necessarily evil - especially if the Xiggi method comes into play) but just how far does an Admissions Police brigade have to dig? Then again if gpa, test scores, teacher’s recs, and/or graded hs writing sample don’t do the trick there is always Turnitin:</p>
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<p>As I recall, the writing portion of the SAT was added as a concession to the U of Cal.; correct me if I am wrong.</p>
<p>In large scale assessment, there a few principles about scoring constructed response items like the writing portion of the SAT that may influence the utility of the measure. Multiple choice is far more reliable than constructed response (see Bennett and Ward,1993;Hillsdale: LEA). One way to increase reliability and reduce measurement errors is to add more items to any assessment. With a writing portion, it is very difficult to increase the number of writing samples per person without also increaseing the time of the examination. Should one think that increasing the number of points per writing item will remedy this, such a stratgy has weaknesses when trying to maintain reader reliability; a property normally managed internally by looking at the perfect agreement rates as well adjacency of scores from second readers. Increasing the number of points on a writing reponse will almost certainly have a negative impact on classical measures of rater consistency such as Cohen’s kappa.</p>
<p>There is also considerable evidence that multiple choice responses are a farily good predictor of constructed response preformance. Most of the cross subject test correlations are fairly high (it is almost impossible to have a test of cognitive abilitites that has predictive power without also measuring Spearman’s g).</p>
<p>It is any wonder that many colleges are either not using the writing portion of the scores or are using it as a measure of less importance than the multiple choice sections of Reading and Mathematics? Using the writing portion to vet some essays could be one of the better uses for the writing portion of the SAT.</p>
<p>Well, quibbles about the merits and predictive validity of the SAT aside, I do believe that many, if not all, college apps have a box to tick or a line to sign that pledge applicants to adhere to an honor code although it seems like increasingly the attitude is “all is fair in love and war”.</p>
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<a href=“http://liberalarts.wabash.edu/cila/home.cfm?news_id=3677[/url]”>http://liberalarts.wabash.edu/cila/home.cfm?news_id=3677</a></p>
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<p>I can’t help juxtaposing this anecdote with the thread on Esther whose naive and uninformed essay earned her such scorn. At least, she did not invent a trip to Kentucky.</p>
<p>Marite, regarding the story of the Newton North, it is undeniable that a few posters zoomed in on the peculiar manner in which the write decided to describe her grandparent’s village and her home town. </p>
<p>However, others correctly pointed out that, despite living in town that could be a poster child for “access to the best and most expensive” advice**, the writer paid no heed to advice that is VERY commonly available for a few dollars in any booksore, or for free at your local library right here. The tragedy was not so much that the result was a particularly lacking essay, but that nobody in her environment seemed capable to see WHY that essay was as poor as it was ill-advised. </p>
<p>** The NYT article mentioned a company called Chyten; the company is rather famous for its advice on essays. For years, they offered a fool-proof method to ace the SAT Writing essay. I doubt VERY much that this is not common knowledge in Newton.</p>
<p>At $275 an hour (it could even be more) the Chyten advice doesn’t come cheaply. We know people who spent almost $5K with Neil himself, and had no significant score improvement. People need to have their eyes wide open, and I am afraid some parents think you can purchase an elite admittance, if they spend enough money on tutors and consultants.</p>
<p>I am not defending the quality of the Newton North essay. What I tried ( poorly, I admit) to suggest is that a teenager from Newton had a hard time finding an essay topic that would not make her sound bland. To be sure, she could have written a more persuasive essay on her quite impressive community service, or some other topic. But she must have felt that her life was that of an ordinary BWRK from suburbia.</p>
<p>So did the girl who faked going to Guatemala. She invented a more glamorous life for heself She pulled it off and got admitted to some great school apparentely. The morale one could draw from her story? Confession is good for the soul; but hold it off until after you graduate. Happy Easter!</p>
<p>40 years ago when my brother-in-law applied to Cornell for engineering his essay was one paragraph. He is a very interesting, accomplished, and intelligent man now with two degrees crom Cornell. If he applied today I doubt he would even be considered. He palyed no sports, had no leadership positions, did no community service. He did work and collect frogs and toads and snakes and turtles. He did fish and hunt and tinker and new how to use a hammer and saw and how to build a house. Today he is an executive with a Finnish company that makes mining equipment.</p>
<p>I guess the world will be a better place 40 years down the road now that we are assuring ourselves that all this kids being admitted to elite schools have a passion for saving the world… or at least say they do in an essay.</p>
<p>A very good friend of mine is a writer. He has been the editor of many world-class newspapers/magazines. His father is a professor at an ivy league school of journalism. In their words, “good writing” is what happens between the first draft and final copy. It is all in the editing and rewriting. </p>
<p>Interestingly, neither care much about spelling and basic grammar. In their words, “That is why we have proofreaders on staff.” Correcting basic spelling and grammatical errors in nothing more than polishing. </p>
<p>Both prefer clarity, brevity, accuracy. They favor the use of vivid but simple language. </p>
<p>Neither have any respect for the SAT writing test.</p>
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<p>But one has to be aware that one’s essay needs polishing. And lots of students, including at top colleges, don’t know that they’re using “their,” “there,” and “they’re” indiscriminately and interchangeably, not to mention colloquial expressions that should have no place in academic writing, or don’t know what a thesis statement and topic sentence are. </p>
<p>I agree with the last two sentences.</p>