Has anyone heard of people paying others to basically write their child's essay for their admission application? Is this really a thing? I would think/hope the admissions folks would frown on this . This seems to skirt on the fringe of the Aggie Code of Honor. Our daughter has spent a great deal of time drafting/revising her essay and apparently some of her classmates are paying someone else to write theirs. Even if your giving someone a list of your accomplishments or example of overcoming challenges , to have them write it seems bad form

I high achieving senior will be better at writing an essay about themselves than a stranger (or chatgpt). Also some of those kids saying that might just be using a college prep service to for advice/editing on essays. double b helped my kid on hers.

Paying to write an essay from scratch is a bad idea on multiple fronts beyond the moral issue. It will be hard to make it authentic and that is what admissions officers are looking for.

That said I don't have any issue with someone getting help with their essay and edits and in fact I think it is highly recommended to do so.

The reality though is admissions has become a game and people are looking for any advantage they can get. If they don't then they are putting themselves at a disadvantage. The reality is the process has become much more complex and competitive in the last decade due to innovations with the internet and the Common App. If you don't have someone helping to guide you and you are looking at a selective school (under 25% admission). You can certainly DYI but it's putting yourself at a disadvantage. On the other side you can't just outsource it, it has to be from you. Maybe someone could try and completely have it done from the outside but that's likely to backfire.

Just a lot of changes and things haven't yet settled out. I'd compare it to how NIL and the Transfer rule changes have changed recruiting. It's just a fast moving and complex landscape that is changing constantly as schools and students and the services in between continue to evolve around it.

BoDog said:

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Why would you pay anyone when chat gpt would do it for free in about 10 seconds?

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Many of the selective colleges use Chat GPT detectors. I strongly discourage using it, and if students choose to use it, then do so briefly to prompt their creative thinking.

I'm sure some are buying it, but it's probably very limited. What seems to be very widespread is professional tutoring to help generate an idea, an outline, and review drafts. Not cheating by any means, but it defeats a significant part of the purpose IMO.

At this point, I feel like one key purpose of the essay for some schools is leveraging it as a way to cut down on the number of applications from kids that don't have the school near the top of their list, especially if the school makes it a question that doesn't translate to a common app prompt. Make it a bit more of a hassle to apply and that's one less offer you may waste on a kid very unlikely to attend.

They should do it themselves. Any deviation violates the Aggie Code of Honor. If you want it proofed... fine. My daughter did it herself. We, as parents, only read it after it was submitted.

You had people go to jail because they scammed USC and other top schools for admission.

The more competitive admissions get this will continue to happen.

Wealthy parents will not allow their kids to get left behind.

You all realize that there are many services that exist to support under represented populations as well. Heck, Texas A&M sponsors a program called the College Advising Corps to assist with these college prep matters.

For every industry, there will always be consultants and advisors that people can look to for guidance.

And yes, Operation Varsity Blues was a criminal scandal, but that is something very rare and that went against our industry ethics and standards. Everyone within our industry vehemently rejected their work as it painted a poor picture of the good work that we do to help students.

double b said:

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You all realize that there are many services that exist to support under represented populations as well. Heck, Texas A&M sponsors a program called the College Advising Corps to assist with these college prep matters.

For every industry, there will always be consultants and advisors that people can look to for guidance.

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The reality is the college application process for Selective schools is very complicated and incredibly competitive. Without guidance you are at a significant disadvantage. The essays are also far from clear cut for most students because it's a different type of writing than what they typically have done in High School. If a kid just answers the prompts without knowing what is expected they are likely not going to do well. Then the college specific questions also require a different thought process than the personal essay.

For most schools it doesn't matter much but for the ones the selective schools it definitely does. Folks like Robb do an incredible job and have high integrity.

The real question here though was about someone just having another person write their essays completely. I just don't think that would succeed but if they did it is very likely to backfire. A big part of the point of the application is to see how much thought a person is putting into it as much as what they say. You have to put in the work. If you don't it will eventually catch up with you even beyond the morals of having someone do it for you.

aggie93 said:

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double b said:

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You all realize that there are many services that exist to support under represented populations as well. Heck, Texas A&M sponsors a program called the College Advising Corps to assist with these college prep matters.

For every industry, there will always be consultants and advisors that people can look to for guidance.

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The reality is the college application process for Selective schools is very complicated and incredibly competitive. Without guidance you are at a significant disadvantage. The essays are also far from clear cut for most students because it's a different type of writing than what they typically have done in High School. If a kid just answers the prompts without knowing what is expected they are likely not going to do well. Then the college specific questions also require a different thought process than the personal essay.

For most schools it doesn't matter much but for the ones the selective schools it definitely does. Folks like Robb do an incredible job and have high integrity.

The real question here though was about someone just having another person write their essays completely. I just don't think that would succeed but if they did it is very likely to backfire. A big part of the point of the application is to see how much thought a person is putting into it as much as what they say. You have to put in the work. If you don't it will eventually catch up with you even beyond the morals of having someone do it for you.

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Thanks for all the input. I agree.

'Chat GPT detectors.' Haha.

Unless you literally take the initial ChatGPT output and submit it without editing, this is hardly a real problem. You can search online to find the many articles regarding the difficulty instructors have using those so-called 'Chat GPT detectors' to detect student use ChatGPT for classroom assignments.

The advice to use ChatGPT to provide a first draft for further work (either further tasking ChatGPT for edits or doing those edits the old fashioned way) is excellent advice. But discouraging all use is going way too far.

Higher education and secondary education would do well to teach students to use the tool instead of prohibiting it. These tools are not going away and those not adept at using them are going to be at a strong disadvantage in many workplaces.

I wouldn't think such behavior would be necessary except for those applying to the top 25-30 colleges in the country. I can easily see that being done by Ivy League applicants or those applying to similarly selective schools though. Frankly, the standards at those schools are just ridiculous and are narrowly focused on making sure only left leaning SJW types are admitted. The essay prompts clearly reflect that priority at most such schools.

Delegating is a skill top executives and CEOs have mastered.

Sounds like these kids are on track to run their own business. Paying someone else that is better than you to do the job is how successful businesses are run.

But for an admissions essay, it's definitely crossing an ethical boundary if the instructions provided specify that the applicant write the essay.

At some point everything catches up with everyone, I've seen a lot of parents spend a lot of money to " help" their kids. I don't know a single case where this actually helped though.

There is no limit to what parents will spend or do to help their kids. At some point, it's entirely up to the kid. This should at least happen by high school..

There will always be parents willing to spend any amount and there will always be someone willing to take their money.

Here is a gray area I observed about 10-15 years or so ago locally in BCS when my kids were getting ready to apply to A&M. Several of the people in the admissions office responsible for the actual essay review and ranking belonged to the same church. They typically would go to the church's college youth group and advertise for their A&M student part time workers in admissions. Part of the students duties was going through the essays as a general first cut, etc. and scoring them. Pretty soon members of the high school youth group and their parents were asking those TAMU students in the college youth group working in admissions to review their kids A&M essays once the high school student had developed a good solid effort. The college students would then tell them (for a fee of course) what to do/change to get their essay into the "best pile". Several of them working in admissions were making pretty good bank from this side gig from what I could tell.