Another College Cheating Scandal: Personal Essay ‘Editors’ Reveal How They Cheat for Rich

Tarpley Hitt

Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast/Getty

Last week, the operation that is sting Operation Varsity Blues exposed a long list of well-heeled and well-known parents who rigged the college-admissions process, in part by paying proctors and ringers to take or correct tests due to their kids. Not long after news of this scheme broke, critics rushed to point out that celebrity parents like Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman didn’t need certainly to break what the law states to game the machine.

When it comes to ultra-rich, big contributions could easily get their name on a science building and their offspring an area at a top-tier school—an option California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently called “legal bribery.” Even the moderately wealthy can grease the admissions process with extensive SAT tutoring or, more problematically, college application essay editing.

Within the admissions process, there’s a top premium on the personal statement, a 500-word essay submitted through the Common Application, about some foible or lesson, which aims to give readers a better feeling of the student than, say, a standardized test score. More than one university and advising blog rank the essay among the “most important” aspects of the method; one consultant writing in the brand new York Times described it as “the part that is purest of the application.”

But while test scores are completed by the student alone—barring bribed proctors, that is—any number of individuals can modify an essay before submission, opening it up to exploitation and less-than-pure tactics as a result of helicopter parents or college-prep that is expensive who cater to the one percent.

In interviews with all the Daily Beast, eight college application tutors shed light from the economy of editing, altering, and, from time to time, outright rewriting statements that are personal. The essay editors, who decided to speak in the condition of anonymity since many still work with their field, painted the portrait of an industry rife with ethical hazards, where in actuality the relative line between helping and cheating can be hard to draw.

The employees who spoke to your Daily Beast often worked for companies with similar approaches to essay writing. For some, tutors would Skype with students early on into the application process to brainstorm ideas. (“I would personally say there were lots of cases of hammering kids with potential ideas,” one tutor said. “Like, ‘That’s a terrible idea for an essay, why don’t you try this instead?’”) Then, the student would write a draft, and bounce back edits making use of their tutor, that would grade it relating to a standardized rubric, which included categories like spelling, sentence structure, style, or whether or not it was “bullshit-free.”

Most made between $30 and $100 each hour, or around $1,000 for helping a student through the entire application process, at times taking care of as much as 18 essays at any given time for assorted schools. Two tutors who struggled to obtain the same company said they got an added bonus if clients were accepted at their target universities.

One consultant, a 22-year-old Harvard graduate, told The Daily Beast that, during his senior year in college, he began being employed as an essay editor for a company that hires Ivy Leaguers to tutor applicants on a variety of subjects. As he took the task in 2017, the company was still young and fairly informal september. Managers would send him essays via email, in addition to tutor would revise and return them, with anywhere between a 24-hour and two-week turnaround. But right from the start, the consultant explained, his managers were that is“pretty explicit the task entailed less editing than rewriting.

“When it’s done, it needs to be great enough for the student to attend that school, whether that means lying, making things through to behalf of this student, or basically just changing anything so that it will be acceptable,” he told The Daily Beast. “I’ve edited anywhere from 200 to 225 essays. So, probably like 150 students total. I would say about 50 percent were entirely rewritten.”

The tutor said, a student submitted an essay on hip-hop, which named his three or four favorite rappers, but lacked a clear narrative in one particularly egregious instance. The tutor said he rewrote the essay to tell the story of the student moving to America, struggling to connect with an stepfamily that is american but eventually finding a link through rap. “I rewrote the essay so that it said. you understand, he unearthed that through his stepbrother he could connect through rap music and having a stepbrother teach him about rap music, and I talked about any of it thing that is loving-relation. I don’t determine if which was true. He just said he liked rap music.”

As time passes, the tutor said, his company shifted its work model. Instead of sending him random, anonymous essays, the managers started initially to assign him students to oversee throughout the college application cycle that is entire. “They thought it looked better,” the tutor said. “So if I have some student, ‘Abby Whatever,’ I would personally write all 18 of her essays so that it would seem like it was all one voice. I experienced this past year 40 students in the fall, and I also wrote all of their essays for the Common App and everything else.”

Not all consultant was as explicit about the editing world’s moral ambiguities. One administrator emphasized that his company’s policies were firmly anti-cheating. He conceded, however, that the principles were not always followed: “Bottom line is: it will take more time for an employee to stay with a student which help them evauluate things for themselves, than it will to simply do it. We had problems in past times with people corners that are cutting. We’ve also had problems in the past with students asking for corners to be cut.”

Another consultant who worked for the company that is same later became the assistant director of U.S. operations told The Daily Beast that while rewriting had not been overtly encouraged, it absolutely was also not strictly prohibited.

“The precise terms were: I was getting paid a lump sum payment in exchange for helping this student with this App that is common essay supplement essays at a couple universities. I happened to be given a rubric of qualities when it comes to essay, and I also was told that the essay needed to score a point that is certain that rubric,” he said. “It was never clear that anything legal was in our way, we were just told in order to make essays—we were told and now we told tutors—to make the essays meet a certain quality standard and, you know, we didn’t ask way too many questions regarding who wrote what.”

Most of the tutors told The Daily Beast that their customers were often international students, seeking suggestions about how to break in to the university system that is american. A number of the foreign students, four associated with eight tutors told The Daily Beast, ranged in their English ability and required significant rewriting. One consultant, a freelancer who stumbled into tutoring into the fall of 2017 after a classmate needed anyone to take over his clients, recounted the storyline of a female applicant with little-to-no English skills.

“Her parents had me can be bought in and look at all her college essays. The shape these were brought to me in was essentially unreadable. I mean there were the bare workings of a narrative here—even the grasp on English is tenuous,” he said. “I believe that, you understand, to be able to read and write in English will be variety of a prerequisite for an American university. But these parents really don’t worry about that at all. They’re planning to pay whoever to make the essays appear to be whatever to obtain their kids into school.”

The tutor continued to advise this client, doing “numerous, numerous edits on this girl’s essay” until she was later accepted at Columbia University. But not long after she matriculated, the tutor said she reached back off to him for assistance with her English courses. “She doesn’t understand how to write essays, and she’s struggling in class,” he told The Daily Beast. “i actually do the help for this that I can, but I say to the parents, essay help ‘You know, you did not prepare her. She is put by you in this position’. Because obviously, the relevant skills required to be at Columbia—she doesn’t have those skills.”

The Daily Beast reached out to numerous college planning and tutoring programs additionally the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, but none responded to requests to discuss their policies on editing versus rewriting.

The American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers also declined comment, and top universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Brown would not respond or declined touch upon how they protect well from essays being written by counselors or tutors. Stanford said in a statement that they “have no policy that is specific regard to the essay portion of the application form.”