Anonymous wrote:Oxbridge makes you submit a graded essay from actual school coursework.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who says they put a lot of weight on it?

Why not also toss out GPA (maybe they had a tutor) or SAT/ACT scores because they may have prepped?

Admissions departments aren't grading them the way a teacher would, they are looking to see what the student can reveal about him or herself or how they think.

If your essay was slapped together quickly, with or without help, it will show.

This is what bothers me about essays. What judgments are admissions people making about the student? It seems so judgy and random (e.g. one student might write about some interesting life experiences, another writes about something else but has also had interesting life experiences--just didn't write about them, and an admissions panel deems only the first one worthy of admission, all things being equal. Or vice versa. This one is more creative. This one had hardship. This one is funny. These are just one essay in a kid's life and unless horribly written or offensive, I agree it doesn't make sense to give it weight. And as evidence of excellent writing, like the other posters said, how do admissions know it's legit).

Another issue for my DC is that DC writes like an adult, with an impressive vocabulary--DC is not showing off, just happens to have facility with language and enjoys writing. I've heard that the essay has to sound like a teenager wrote it. Will some admissions person think DC got help? Or find fault for not sounding like a typical teenager? I fear that's how they think.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the kid who had a tutor for every class and summer school. That is a HIGH motivated child. Very rare for that age group.

Met a lot of kids like that at HPY in the 80s, then observed it as a parent. The idea is to get ahead on all the hard classes of its a repeat. Nearly impossible not to have a high GPA. Kids were not highly motivated. It just the way the family did things. They did not even know it was weird until maybe 10th grade. Why are all these kids enrolled in summer school at the wrong big 3 when they could take it at their own school and no one is putting it on their transcript.

Anonymous wrote:Nah.

My kid's essay was sweet. He sounded like a kid and he described his oddball hobby and how it matters to him.

I think it helped his application. Why should the quirky lose the one bit of individuality?

It is the beyond-reason test prep that is the bigger worry.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This scandal proves that SAT scores can be rigged and can’t be trusted. And eliminate the essays. We all know is gpa’s are too varied to be particularly helpful. So college should be open to all comers. And free.

Not really. This guy actually bribed college board official into changing kids answers. I can't imagine that there is much of that going on. The employees doing this were taking a huge risk, that most people would not be willing to take, and most people wouldn't have the balls to offer a bribe to these people in the first place.

Ok but add to that all the evidence that proves or strongly suggests that test prep advantages absolutely go to the wealthy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who says they put a lot of weight on it?

Why not also toss out GPA (maybe they had a tutor) or SAT/ACT scores because they may have prepped?

Admissions departments aren't grading them the way a teacher would, they are looking to see what the student can reveal about him or herself or how they think.

If your essay was slapped together quickly, with or without help, it will show.

The difference is basically no one's kid is getting tutored for every subject through all four years of high school. And even SAT tutoring can only really raise a score by so much. But it is entirely possible for someone else to completely write an applicant's essay without a college knowing about it. And for what it's worth, when my husband was in college, he wrote an essay for his girlfriend who was still in HS, and she got into UVA with it, so I'm not really buying this idea that colleges can really tell that the essays weren't written by the students.

Um, my child goes to private and there are kids there that have daily tutors for all subjects. When you have $, you can do that.

Anonymous wrote:This thread is so full of privilege. You know that most students don’t have parents paying for prep and coaching, right? You think everyone is doing it because you are in a bubble.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who says they put a lot of weight on it?

Why not also toss out GPA (maybe they had a tutor) or SAT/ACT scores because they may have prepped?

Admissions departments aren't grading them the way a teacher would, they are looking to see what the student can reveal about him or herself or how they think.

If your essay was slapped together quickly, with or without help, it will show.

The difference is basically no one's kid is getting tutored for every subject through all four years of high school. And even SAT tutoring can only really raise a score by so much. But it is entirely possible for someone else to completely write an applicant's essay without a college knowing about it. And for what it's worth, when my husband was in college, he wrote an essay for his girlfriend who was still in HS, and she got into UVA with it, so I'm not really buying this idea that colleges can really tell that the essays weren't written by the students.

That's essentially what private school is.

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the kid who had a tutor for every class and summer school. That is a HIGH motivated child. Very rare for that age group.

Anonymous wrote:I have been the interviewer for postgrad positions and trained university students in how to interview well.

The essay is best used as a step-off for the interview. You ask students more details about situations they referenced, ask them to expand on the connections they drew, and the like. It is obvious pretty quickly which essays were written with passion from the heart, and which ones the supposed writers were barely familiar with.

You can definitely still rig it. There are people who know to study their own essays and prepare. But it's hard to get that to hold up for repeated questions, especially if you dig down into the meat of it.