WashU - New Early Action plan & policy changes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is heading to an ivy unhooked so I say this as someone whose kid wrote good essays:

The essays- esp supplementals -are a system that can be gamed. Getting rid of them makes perfect sense. They do not provide that much info on a kid bc of heavy editing but mostly bc kids who are applying to highly rejective schools either figure out how to write the essays or don’t. This is a game and waste of our kids’ time.

Get rid of them!!!!!

How do you game them??

Are you seriously asking how essays can be gamed?

There is an entire industry of professionals who edit/ghostwrite college application essays and advise students on what topics to cover, what topics to avoid, and above all how to sound “authentic.”

The industry exists because it works.

Yes, many kids write their own essays. But it is entirely possible to pay someone to generate an “authentic” “personal” essay, or to massage your child’s actual authentic essay into one that will register as “authentic” with AOs. Students submitting those professionally edited essays are routinely admitted to the most selective schools.

Yes, it's wild. We have 3 kids. Two wrote their essays entirely on their own with just us editing for grammar at the end. We ran out of steam with the third and were dealing with two sick and dying parents at the same time (the summer and fall of child #3s senior year) so we hired a full-service consultant. This is how the essays went: the kid wrote them, we did our customary read-through: "these look great!" and then the kid sent them to the consultant and that person would literally re-write them from top to bottom. I realized "so THIS is how the other half applies to college."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is heading to an ivy unhooked so I say this as someone whose kid wrote good essays:

The essays- esp supplementals -are a system that can be gamed. Getting rid of them makes perfect sense. They do not provide that much info on a kid bc of heavy editing but mostly bc kids who are applying to highly rejective schools either figure out how to write the essays or don’t. This is a game and waste of our kids’ time.

Get rid of them!!!!!

How do you game them??

Are you seriously asking how essays can be gamed?

There is an entire industry of professionals who edit/ghostwrite college application essays and advise students on what topics to cover, what topics to avoid, and above all how to sound “authentic.”

The industry exists because it works.

Yes, many kids write their own essays. But it is entirely possible to pay someone to generate an “authentic” “personal” essay, or to massage your child’s actual authentic essay into one that will register as “authentic” with AOs. Students submitting those professionally edited essays are routinely admitted to the most selective schools.

Yes, it's wild. We have 3 kids. Two wrote their essays entirely on their own with just us editing for grammar at the end. We ran out of steam with the third and were dealing with two sick and dying parents at the same time (the summer and fall of child #3s senior year) so we hired a full-service consultant. This is how the essays went: the kid wrote them, we did our customary read-through: "these look great!" and then the kid sent them to the consultant and that person would literally re-write them from top to bottom. I realized "so THIS is how the other half applies to college."

Did your first 2 kids still do pretty well with their own essays?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Early Action, removing an essay, test optional…Northeastern 2.0

Crazy how Northeastern is always ahead of the game. In fairness Northeastern takes less of its class ED than WashU (or BU and BC for that matter). WashU and Emory are the king of stuffing the class with ED students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:EA detracts from ED. All EA students are using your school as a safety if the school also has ED.

I appreciate the value of ED in allowing schools to love the kids who love them back. But no school wants to fill its incoming class with students who consider it to be a reach.