I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
1–10 of 232 posts
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#2First of all - wow, what a talented writer. No wonder her clients have done so well.
Forgery of college admissions essays is rampant not just in China but also in the US (and I suspect in many other places), but actually the problem is really much worse than that. With the boom of the "college consultants" industry, professionals are essentially "forging" entire high school careers on behalf of their clients - telling them what classes to take, which clubs to join, where and how many hours they should volunteer, etc. The end result is that these clients look like amazingly productive students with a superhuman sense of self-initiative, whereas in reality these kids simply followed a script written by some adult their parents paid large sums of money for.
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#3At $400 a piece, often including lengthy interviews and an overwhelming demand, the author should raise their rates. Probably by an order of magnitude.
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#4At $400 a piece, often including lengthy interviews and an overwhelming demand, the author should raise their rates. Probably by an order of magnitude.
Not to mention that her target clientele have deep pockets.
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#5I have several friends here in Brazil that were accepted in top USA MBAs. All of them are very smart, but all of them hired a consultant to help with admission process.
No one hired a ghost writer, all of them wrote their own essays, but in all cases the consultant asked them to rewrite 5 or 6 times, at least. There it is where it seems to exist the ethical line: ghost writer, no good; rewrite yourself until every single sentence is exactly like the consultant wants, good.
It is easy to see that both are equally fake essays. All consultants say: "don't even bother about trying to be original or clever. Your only goal is to write exactly what the admission people want to read". And it works.
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#6At $400 a piece, often including lengthy interviews and an overwhelming demand, the author should raise their rates. Probably by an order of magnitude.
Agree. $400 seems awfully low. What does a PR guy get for a piece?
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#7This story really irks me but honestly its not like cheating in developing countries like India and China is anything new.
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#8Sidebar - for those who wrote admissions essays - do you remember what you wrote?
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#9Paul Graham had some interesting things to say about the value of elite college degrees back in 2007: http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html
Any sign employers have started to focus less on recruiting at the most prestigious schools? And if they're not looking there, where are they looking?
Come to think of it, where are the founders accepted by YC coming from?
Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays
#10So she now makes decent money but feels like she is selling her soul. That seems so common. And I find myself increasingly wondering if the world is really so screwed up that it is not possible to make it, financially, without feeling like a sell-out or if there is some other explanation for that phenomenon.
Surely, there are people in the world who are not destitute and who don't feel like they are selling their soul?