Sharing admission essays

[JDMe]

I have gotten through into all top schools for MFE. So, some of my friends have started asking me for my essays.

My question is:

(1) Is it okay to share my admission essays? I am sure they are going to copy from my essay. If they do, will I be in trouble? (Off-course they will, for copyright infringement.)

(2) Is there a difference in the way schools care about my essays if they at all, when I join them and when I reject their offer?

Sorry it makes me feel really awkward asking this question but I am in a serious dilemma.

 

[Ken Abbott]

I am an adjunct at three QF programs and I work for a major financial institution.

I have zero tolerance for plagiarism. If I became aware of a copied essay, I would try to have the copier expelled. (I would probably succeed.) I would also go after the person from whom the essay was copied, assuming complicity. My experience with university administration suggests that they would be fully supportive of this approach.

 

[Vu Nguyen]

Just offer to help them work on it, and proofread etc. You do not have to let them see your essays. They should understand that!

 

[jimkliew]

Stay golden pony boy!

I completely agree with Ken. Do what's right gentlemen/ladies always. Small things like this tend to snowball, shall I say the "M" word?

 

[Yike Lu]

If you're sure they will copy your essay if you give it to them and you're truly their friend, you would refuse to give your essay to them.

I sort of talked about this in the thread about schools checking essays for plagiarism. If you can't come up with your own reasons for going to a program (whether it's MFE, PhD, undergrad, whatever), you should think twice about applying at all.

As far actually helping your friends, I agree with Vu. Helping them write their own is the way to go, although there is a limit to how far that can go.

Everybody has their own unique style of writing. I handed my friend a copy of my MFE essay for her to critique (I trust her and she's a Chem student, so no worries about plagiarism there) and she completely freaked out about my style of writing, saying it's too aggressive, informal, not respectful enough etc.

I didn't end up taking her advice on my admissions essays. I'd rather have schools reject the real me than accept a dumbed down version. The risk paid off.

I did take some (though not all) of her advice on a different essay - more content changes than stylistic.

 

[TraderJoe]

This practice is actually fairly common for MBA admissions. About 40% of the people who apply to the Top 20 MBA programs use admissions consultants like hbsguru.com and pay them about $2,000 to prepare the MBA application package with the essays, etc. The practice is so common that the schools have got used to it and these students actually have much greater success rate in their admissions than the students who do all the work by themselves. But the MBA students tend to be more aggressive and competitive and high-achievers and may not be overly concerned about the ethics.

 

[dstefan]

I fully agree with Ken. We do not tolerate plagiarism at any point, including during the admission process.

That said, your essay is an opportunity to make yourself interesting to the Admissions Committee. The part of the essay for which outside sources of inspiration can be used is the standard one, which everyone gets more or less right (you were always good in math, and financial engineering will allow you to match your skills with market interest). The most value added of the essay comes from what you can say about yourself to make yourself unique. And plagiarizing that would be counterproductive.

 

[bigbadwolf]

This practice is actually fairly common for MBA admissions. About 40% of the people who apply to the Top 20 MBA programs use admissions consultants like hbsguru.com and pay them about $2,000 to prepare the MBA application package with the essays, etc. The practice is so common that the schools have got used to it and these students actually have much greater success rate in their admissions than the students who do all the work by themselves. But the MBA students tend to be more aggressive and competitive and high-achievers and may not be overly concerned about the ethics.

It raises questions beyond ethics. Do the admissions committess of these schools even care about originality and personal voice? It seems to be a case of counterfeit people offering counterfeit essays in a mass assembly-line society. Authenticity of any kind has long fled from American shores.

 

[TraderJoe]

It raises questions beyond ethics. Do the admissions committess of these schools even care about originality and personal voice? It seems to be a case of counterfeit people offering counterfeit essays in a mass assembly-line society. Authenticity of any kind has long fled from American shores.

Well that is the strange thing about it. These admissions consultants like hbsguru.com give the prospective applicants the points which the admission committees are looking for. The applicants then draft the essays. The admissions consultants then edit the essays and fine tune the entire application package to target it for that particular school. This dude hbsguru.com charges $2,600 PER SCHOOL for help with the admissions and another $500 PER SCHOOL to prepare the applicant for the interviews. The students are so desperate to get into the top schools that they find that $2,600 is peanuts compared to the $180K debt which they will get from the MBA student loans. Somewhere along the line ethics gets comrpomised and everyone, including the admissions committees is fully aware of what is happening.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Well that is the strange thing about it. These admissions consultants like hbsguru.com give the prospective applicants the points which the admission committees are looking for. The applicants then draft the essays. The admissions consultants then edit the essays and fine tune the entire application package to target it for that particular school.

This becomes more and more interesting. What this suggests is that the applicants -- college graduates -- cannot do at least some of the following: 1) make some schematic connection between their ideas, 2) write coherent paragraphs, each based on one (or more ideas), 3) link the paragraphs into a coherent whole that moves forward, 4) make appropriate word choice. Alternatively, the admissions process is so rigged that even a sterling essay might not pass muster because it lacks specific buzzwords and ideas. In either case it raises troubling questions about American education. One thing I've noticed en passant is that Americans are taught to be prolix: to be verbose without saying much of anything. So when they do have to say something, and in a concise and coherent fashion, they're stumped. But then again, if Stanley McChrystal sent home a message like "Peccavi," I doubt he would be understood.

 

[tylor]

This becomes more and more interesting. What this suggests is that the applicants -- college graduates -- cannot do at least some of the following: 1) make some schematic connection between their ideas, 2) write coherent paragraphs, each based on one (or more ideas), 3) link the paragraphs into a coherent whole that moves forward, 4) make appropriate word choice. Alternatively, the admissions process is so rigged that even a sterling essay might not pass muster because it lacks specific buzzwords and ideas. In either case it raises troubling questions about American education.

I feel like it's moreso classic Americanism at work. You have to do whatever it takes to win. These consulting agencies know what the schools want to hear, the student does not. A non-Harvard graduate doesn't know what to say to appeal to the Harvard graduate deciding if he/she is worthy. I saw something similar to this when it was SAT time in high school; my wealthier friends paid thousands to be tutored one-on-one for the comprehension section - the tutor just so happened to be responsible for deciding which words should be in the tests. Fair? You either play along or you're at a disadvantage.

 

[bigbadwolf]

I feel like it's moreso classic Americanism at work. You have to do whatever it takes to win. These consulting agencies know what the schools want to hear, the student does not. A non-Harvard graduate doesn't know what to say to appeal to the Harvard graduate deciding if he/she is worthy. I saw something similar to this when it was SAT time in high school; my wealthier friends paid thousands to be tutored one-on-one for the comprehension section - the tutor just so happened to be responsible for deciding which words should be in the tests. Fair? You either play along or you're at a disadvantage.

Oxbridge in some senses seems to be converging to the same: there are consultants available to assist with the application and interview process. The difference seems to be that the kind of people using these services (the Russian nouveau riche, for example) are not necessarily the English. Perhaps it is a function of a winner-take-all society -- where Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Princeton have become gatekeepers -- that is now a global phenomenon.

 

[TraderJoe]

Well, it is all very well to criticize the system and criticize the admissions consultants and say that the students who use these admissions consultants are pathetic. But in the end it all comes down to results. This guy hbsguru.com gets 200 students admitted to Harvard MBA program every year and their average expected lifetime earnings with the Harvard MBA increases by $3 million per student. So the $2,600 investment is really peanuts compared to the $3 million payoff. I guess that people are forced to play the game or just lose out. There is really no point in complaining about it because everyone knows that $$$ and connections makes the world go around.

 

[Yike Lu]

I was going to write a bit more but there really is no point.

Life is not fair. Genetics, location at birth, parents' wealth, parents' social status, parents' knowledge, and much more are all out of your control and all well-accepted to be important to one's potential. To quote Rocky:
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it."

But honestly why do you care about things you cannot control? Wouldn't your time be better spent worrying about something you CAN control and improve? And not all these things need to compromise your ethics, by the way...

 

[coolharvard]

This practice is actually fairly common for MBA admissions. About 40% of the people who apply to the Top 20 MBA programs use admissions consultants like hbsguru.com and pay them about $2,000 to prepare the MBA application package with the essays, etc. The practice is so common that the schools have got used to it and these students actually have much greater success rate in their admissions than the students who do all the work by themselves. But the MBA students tend to be more aggressive and competitive and high-achievers and may not be overly concerned about the ethics.

Can admissions consultants take GRE or GMAT for you?

 

[roni]

I have gotten through into all top schools for MFE. So, some of my friends have started asking me for my essays.

My question is:

(1) Is it okay to share my admission essays? I am sure they are going to copy from my essay. If they do, will I be in trouble? (Off-course they will, for copyright infringement.)

(2) Is there a difference in the way schools care about my essays if they at all, when I join them and when I reject their offer?

Sorry it makes me feel really awkward asking this question but I am in a serious dilemma.

I'm sure your friends are not that dumb to copy your essays. If they are that dumb, they have no room in any grad school, IMHO.

And, what makes you be so sure that your friends are going to copy your essays ?
what if they want to use it as guidance ?