I 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.
One things all these stories really emphasize is how much of a hurdle it is for a first-generation college student to get into a top school. It isn't just other bright high schoolers you're in competition with, it is a whole system which is coaching, supporting and, sometimes apparently, doing very professionalized admissions management on their behalf.
It would take an extremely exceptional high schooler to navigate that all alone.
Or perhaps, if admissions offices are looking for exactly that story, all the consultants are just trying to produce exactly what they'd write naturally? :-)
I agree that the ethical line is there. Hut I am saying when a professional consultant tells you what to write and checks your every sentence, it is as fake as a ghost writer (with an interview)
I think the critical difference is that when you pay someone to do the work for you, you do not actually learn anything. When you hire a consultant, you do learn something.
Maybe in a way that doesn't matter since it is not really part of the curriculum, but when I took a biology class at a community college, the professor talked about, I don't know, curving the grade or something and people in the class made some comment about "hey, just give us all A's without requiring us to learn anything" or something like that -- in other words, they were just there to tick off a box towards a sheepskin. And I spoke up to say "Um, what if you actually need to know this for a later class or even a job?"
Yeah, I have always been a party-pooper like that. But, seriously, some folks just want the sheepskin and do not care if they earned it and some folks want the know-how and sort of don't care so much about the public credibility thing. I tend to be in the latter category, and sometimes wonder how much that is to my benefit and how much to my detriment. I know how to accomplish all kinds of things but I seem to mostly suck at getting any kind of credit, credibility, decent pay, that sort of thing.
> 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.
That's definitely where the ethical line is, and makes total sense. Nearly all professional writing you read (books, magazines, etc.) has gone through a similar process between the writer & editor. It's totally expected, but nobody pretends it's not still the author's work. There are thousands of ways to write the same essay, hundreds of which are "good" (acceptable by the editor/consultant). But a ghostwriter only writes it one of those hundred ways, which is almost certainly not the one you would have picked.
It also comes down to a quest of fairness. My public school counselor happily read over a couple essay drafts. They never would have written one for me (that would have required hiring a ghostwriter, which I definitely couldn't afford).
I think you are heavily underestimating the interference the consultant has on the essay. Believe me, it is not even close of an editor (of friends and family proof reading). It is not a "read over".
It is more like this: the consultant make the interview, just like the ghost writer, to know what to write about. Then the consultant tells the applicant to write about "this, this and that. In this way, and don't forget to mention this and this".
Then the aplicant write it. The consultant read it all and says: "this sentence is out of place, you don't need this one, you must include another one on this paragraph". And this go on and on, 5, 6 or even 10 times. Keep in mind that these are essays of one or two pages. The end result has nothing to do with any original writing from the applicant. It is more like a dictation.
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.