A frenzied student hunches over scattered sheets of college applications, each one asking a battery of thorny essay questions. Oh, the college application process, how fun it can be – for masochists. If only there were a way around it, to somehow submit the perfect essay. But in the great American tradition of throwing money at a problem, there is a place to turn: Just buy your application essays online.
Services like www.ivyleagueadmission.com and www.ivyessays.com sell “sample essays” that allow students to review model compositions, for a price. Relatively cheap – $5 to $30 apiece – these essays were selected because they got students into elite universities. They’re supposed to serve as sample essays for applicants, but too often students end up copying these essays directly into their applications as an easy way to get into college.
“It’s an easy way out when you’re filling out 10 applications. You find there’s this Web site, and you think it’s foolproof. Why not spend $30, if you can get an essay written for you?” says Julie Pace, Northwestern tour guide co-coordinator.
When she went to Amherst High School in Amherst, NY, two of her peers were caught with the same plagiarized essay when the guidance department passed the exceptional compositions around the office. As their punishment, the school notified every college they applied to of their plagiarism. A subsequent investigation found that dozens of students in the area had submitted essays stolen from Web sites.
The cheating occurs most often on generic applications, such as the Common Application. Used by 227 schools, the Common Application’s essay questions are about as broad as you can get: “Discuss some issue of personal, local, national or international concern and its importance to you.” Fortunately, some of the schools using the Common Application, such as Yale University, require a supplemental essay with a more specific question.
NU doesn’t really have to deal with this problem, since our essay questions are specific and unique. Its essays have the reputation of being a little odd, and this year’s application form was no exception. One essay question was, “When asked by Pope Boniface VIII to prove his skill as an artist, Giotto (1267-1337) drew a perfect circle freehand. What seemingly simple action would demonstrate your ability or skill, and how would it represent you?”
NU’s questions are so unique that it’s practically impossible for an applicant to buy one of these essays online. “Can you imagine looking at a Web site and finding an essay for our questions? We think they’re pretty specific,” says Carol Lunkenheimer, dean of undergraduate admissions.
But for many other schools that use common essay questions, students can easily get away with copying essays from the Internet. Most schools receive thousands of essays and simply do not have the resources to comb through each one in search of potential plagiarism. It’s a scandal when we hear about cheating in the college classroom, like buying term papers online. But shouldn’t we also be concerned with students cheating to get themselves into college?
These sites even offer sample essays for admission into business, law and medical school. I definitely wouldn’t want a doctor operating on me who couldn’t even answer “Why do you want to be a doctor?” on a medical school application. Pace says that the problem isn’t going away any time soon: “Because so many people don’t know about it, you feel like these kids will get away with it. It’ll be a problem until it becomes really well known. People in admissions have to start looking at these sites.”
