I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays • Hacker News Board

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#201

Post by Tenobrus » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 3:20 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #186

ghshephard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a friend who got her degree from UC Berkeley, and maybe wrote 5-10% of her work, she had other people (Friends, Lovers, colleagues) write all the others - she was a master of manipulation. Who is to say that the valuable skill she developed wasn't her delegation and management skills, and that those were far more important in the long term than her ability to wax poetically about Plato's Republic? The fact that…

>> Who is to say that the valuable skill she developed wasn't her delegation and management skills, and that those were far more important in the long term than her ability to wax poetically about Plato's Republic? Nobody. It's likely a highly useful skill. However she should not have a degree as she didn't do the work. It's pretty simple.

True. But the question is, if she is able to get the degree easily with skills the degree is not meant to require, is there something wrong with the degree itself? If there was a sysadmin certification you could pass with knowledge of cooking and a little luck then the certification is flawed. Of course there are always ways to game any system, but it shouldn't be quite so easy. If a reasonably intelligent person who is good at writing can do the work required to get a degree given a few weeks and internet access, then the degree probably needs to be reworked.

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#202

Post by ghshephard » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 3:36 PM UTC

1337biz wrote: post #156

ghshephard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a friend who got her degree from UC Berkeley, and maybe wrote 5-10% of her work, she had other people (Friends, Lovers, colleagues) write all the others - she was a master of manipulation. Who is to say that the valuable skill she developed wasn't her delegation and management skills, and that those were far more important in the long term than her ability to wax poetically about Plato's Republic? The fact that…

How did it turn our for her? Is that strategy working for her after college as well?

Good question. She has a degree from Cal., so that opens doors for her. Last I checked she was VP of marketing for a chain of Valero gas stations in California. Much of her work seems to consist of negotiating large sums of money from various vendors for placing their products/refrigerators at key locations in their stores. It's astonishing what a generic-brand ice-cream vendor will pay a gas station to replace Hagen Daz with their brand of ice-cream.

I've watched her at work, and really, it seems like she's mostly an excel jockey who dresses well, drives a nice vehicle and takes a lot of meetings with vendors.

Honestly - It's not clear to me that she couldn't have done exactly the same thing without her degree - she got a B.S. in Conservation and Resource studies. What she's doing now seems entirely unrelated.

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#203

Post by Nursie » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 3:53 PM UTC

Tenobrus wrote: post #201

Nursie wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Who is to say that the valuable skill she developed wasn't her delegation and management skills, and that those were far more important in the long term than her ability to wax poetically about Plato's Republic? Nobody. It's likely a highly useful skill. However she should not have a degree as she didn't do the work. It's pretty simple.

True. But the question is, if she is able to get the degree easily with skills the degree is not meant to require, is there something wrong with the degree itself? If there was a sysadmin certification you could pass with knowledge of cooking and a little luck then the certification is flawed. Of course there are always ways to game any system, but it shouldn't be quite so easy. If a reasonably intelligent person who…

>> But the question is, if she is able to get the degree easily with skills the degree is not meant to require, is there something wrong with the degree itself?

Nope. While the people running the degree should take reasonable precautions, it's not on them to entirely prevent people abusing the system. They're running a course, not trying to be the police.

>> Of course there are always ways to game any system, but it shouldn't be quite so easy.

Manipulating multiple people into doing 90% of your work for you over several years is not exactly entry-level cheating.

>> If a reasonably intelligent person who is good at writing can do the work required to get a degree given a few weeks and internet access, then the degree probably needs to be reworked.

I would agree. It doesn't sound much like that happened here though.

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#204

Post by maaku » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 3:57 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #178

cgio wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's wrong to do others work for them and let them represent it as their own" which is what I do in my everyday job. And I am not shadow-writing, I am a consultant...Writing ideas that superiors represent as their own, or clients do. I guess this is capitalism, life or something. And someone not worth it has to be promoted before I do, as in the author's case someone has to be admitted for her to live.

> Writing ideas that superiors represent as their own, or clients do. If they actually do that, it'd be considered unethical. While specific credit isn't always given to the originator of an idea, superiors shouldn't pretend they actually had the idea. In many organizations, explicitly passing off an idea as your own would be a pretty serious offense.

No, it'd be business as usual. It is exactly how things are expected to work in industry. Industry is not academia, and crediting the originator of the idea is not a concern. Especially when it makes you look bad (why couldn't you come up with this? etc.)

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#205

Post by JulianMorrison » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 4:13 PM UTC

Exams are stupid. Qualifications are stupid. Jobs are stupid. Capitalism is stupid. We've turned pure learning into an exercise in grinding, to level up a meaningless stat.

This is the dirty trick of supposed meritocracy: if a whole lot of people have merit enough, then picking among them becomes an inflationary contest in irrelevances. Those people tricking their way past the grind are really doing nothing different than buying a pre-leveled WoW character, it isn't actually harder to play at the higher level, you just get more swag and bigger battles.

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#206

Post by joesmo » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 4:17 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #32

joesmo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does. Look at the price of tuition. That perpetuates class divides more than any other factor.

The top universities (such as those in the Ivy League) typically give full financial aid to any admitted student who comes from a middle or lower class socioeconomic background. The "tuition problem" primarily exists at mediocre private universities (as well as those public universities that have significantly hiked tuition in recent years) which depend on squeezing every last penny from their students.

A few Ivy League universities offering full financial aid doesn't prevent the perpetuation of class divides. The other problem is that even at most Ivy League universities, a lot of this aid is in the form of loans, something that also favors the rich.

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#207

Post by rayiner » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 4:50 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #169

rayiner wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's stupid, and gives an unfair advantage to people from more educated and/or connected backgrounds. Instead of blaming admissions consultants, I'd blame the colleges using these bullshit proxy metrics.

" I'd blame the colleges using these bullshit proxy metrics. " And your alternative to this is? They're metrics for assessing candidates for a reason, you know. Sure, once they start getting gamed , they're no longer accurate, but that's a different discussion.

The metrics are bad even before the gaming. Take volunteer work, for example. In theory, they're selecting for people who show a concern for others. In reality, they emphasize organized, secular volunteer work. So they give points for the sort of stupid, futile service projects upper middle class kids do for photo-ops in Africa, but not points for taking care of aging family members, community involvement through the church, etc.

Moreover, they create a huge bias in favor of kids who can afford to spend their free time doing unpaid work, and against kids that need to work to earn a little extra spending money, or kids that need to help with the family business. We're not even talking about "poor" people here. The people hardest-hit by these policies are first-generation middle class people, who don't stand out with a sob story about how they grew up in poverty, but aren't in a position where they can do volunteer work and also have their parents buy them a car. Emphasizing these factors also creates a bias against immigrants. A lot of first-generation Americans just don't feel comfortable engaging in the community in that way.

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#208

Post by SilasX » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 4:55 PM UTC

WoodenChair wrote: post #39

jurassic wrote: post #34

Really interesting piece. In my post-college lull, I was once in a major financial bind and ended up doing a brief stint as an academic ghostwriter. I wrote term papers, not admission essays, for a ghostwriting service over a period of about 2 months. The work was easy and the money was good. I felt pretty guilty doing the work at first, but I quickly realized that most of the assignments were so banal that I don't t…

I really appreciate your honesty and the knowledge you shared here, but I fear your rationalizations about why what you did is not unethical are just that - rationalizations. It's wrong to do others work for them and let them represent it as their own, no matter how mundane the subject matter. It lets them receive qualifications that they didn't earn and others who want those qualifications in competition with them,…

It's not either/or. They could both be in the wrong here:

- It's wrong to help others pass off someone else's work as their own.

- It's wrong to promote a field or degree program that's so shallow that this kind of thing even works.

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#209

Post by SilasX » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 5:06 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #169

rayiner wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's stupid, and gives an unfair advantage to people from more educated and/or connected backgrounds. Instead of blaming admissions consultants, I'd blame the colleges using these bullshit proxy metrics.

" I'd blame the colleges using these bullshit proxy metrics. " And your alternative to this is? They're metrics for assessing candidates for a reason, you know. Sure, once they start getting gamed , they're no longer accurate, but that's a different discussion.

I'd say it's part of the same discussion if colleges continue to use metrics after they have been gamed of predictive value and now measure something else.

Re: I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

#210

Post by drited » Mon, Sep 01, 2014, 5:24 PM UTC

gaoshan wrote: post #138

She wrote an essay for a Chinese student about her mother washing clothes in a laundromat, leaving them to run errands and returning to find the clothes stolen. While leaving one's belongings unattended in a public place in China would indeed likely result in them being taken (and no one in China would do such a thing expecting anything different), China doesn't have laundromats. Never has. Not that anyone involved s…

I was left wondering if, in an inception kind of way, she made the story about that happening in her personal life up as a hook to get a lot of readers to read the vice article. After all she talks in the story about how incorporating a thread of pain or humanity helps the students who she ghostwrites for to get the reader of their applications to like them. Couldn't she be using the same tactic with a made-up story about the laundromat incident in Korea to get us to like her article?

PS - I liked the article :)