Thoughts about your kid's essay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Essays matter. I remember the Tufts admissions person telling a story about a “great kid, a great application” and then they read his essay that went on and on about how much the applicant wanted to go to Cornell. And how that made Tufts move this kid from “from the yes pile to the no pile.” She stressed how critical it was to read your essays carefully and proof everything before you hit “send.”

This example is pretty egregious. Hardly what most people mean when they think about a weak essay.

[Anonymous]

The essays were too important to let my kid write them himself.

[Anonymous]

My kids didn't let me read their essays.

[Anonymous]

This is a high stakes endeavor people. Some kids don’t need any help, some kids need a little. Others need a lot.
You should know which kid is yours. And act accordingly.

[Anonymous]

You have absolutely no way of knowing if what you did “paid off in the end.” All you know is that your kid got into college.

Your snarky comment is noted. My kid got in ed to an elite while many of the others were rejected or deferred bc they did not put the time into the ec list or essay. The ec list can either be well written or not regardless of the content. Same with the essay. When you are taking an essay and starting with 900 words , cutting it down to the most important 350-400 words, you better be able to know what is important. I am trying to help these people here. I spoke to many mothers who wish they would have done things different. ie not let their kids stay in the bedroom and brood, but actually revise and revise until it is what works.

good luck to all, I still say revise, and have outside help cutting down these essays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have absolutely no way of knowing if what you did “paid off in the end.” All you know is that your kid got into college.

Your snarky comment is noted. My kid got in ed to an elite while many of the others were rejected or deferred bc they did not put the time into the ec list or essay. The ec list can either be well written or not regardless of the content. Same with the essay. When you are taking an essay and starting with 900 words , cutting it down to the most important 350-400 words, you better be able to know what is important. I am trying to help these people here. I spoke to many mothers who wish they would have done things different. ie not let their kids stay in the bedroom and brood, but actually revise and revise until it is what works.

good luck to all, I still say revise, and have outside help cutting down these essays.

This doesn’t speak well of schools that can’t discern when a kid can’t present himself all by himself but needs to pay expert help to create a falsely elevated sense of his abilities. How depressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The essays were too important to let my kid write them himself.

Have you not been paying attention? Your kid is almost all grown up and about to leave home. You are not doing them any favors demonstrating a lack of confidence in their abilities. They need to practice being in charge of their own future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a high stakes endeavor people. Some kids don’t need any help, some kids need a little. Others need a lot.
You should know which kid is yours. And act accordingly.

But at no point do you think it amounts to cheating?

[Anonymous]

I won’t read my kids essays because I myself am a horrible writer. I wouldn’t know how to help them even if I could recognize a crappy essay (which is doubtful).
Any anyway, it’s their application, not mine. I don’t buy into this whole “high stakes” stuff. They write to the best of their ability. They will get into a school that is best suited for them. (Clearly we’re not aiming at Ivys over here).

[Anonymous]

You are fooling yourself if you think admissions can’t tell when a parent heavily orchestrates the essay. Better to let him write it himself, in his own style, in a way that sounds like a 17 year old boy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are fooling yourself if you think admissions can’t tell when a parent heavily orchestrates the essay. Better to let him write it himself, in his own style, in a way that sounds like a 17 year old boy.

This. It’s only “high stakes” because the overbearing parents are making it seem that way.

[Anonymous]

I was a copy editor in an earlier job (the disclosure of which pretty much ensures I'll make typos and mistakes in this post). So, I made a point to have my son let me proof his stuff for grammar. His common app essay and the essays he wrote for his top choices were all pretty good. They were reasonably engaging and reflected his personality. The ones he ripped off at the last minute (e.g. for Purdue's Honors College) were not very good at all.

But, even with the bad ones, I let them go through pretty much intact. I corrected grammar, and helped with sentence structure in a few places, but left the substance alone. I figured a bad essay written by him would be better received by the reviewers than a good one written by his 50 year old dad.

[Anonymous]

Great, so now DCUM posters are spreading advice on how to get away with cheating (i.e., "don't leave fingerprints").

Lovely.

[Anonymous]

We never laid eyes on any of their essays. It isn't our essay, it is their essay, why look?

[Anonymous]

You are fooling yourself if you think admissions can’t tell when a parent heavily orchestrates the essay. Better to let him write it himself, in his own style, in a way that sounds like a 17 year old boy.

I have never understood this. There are high school kids who are great writers. Why would an admissions rep assume an essay was written by a parent just because it's good?