Reminds me a little of this: https://www.vice.com/da/article/xd578z/i-ghostwrote-hundreds-of-chinese-students-ivy-league-admissions-essays-897 https://www.vice.

Reminds me a little of this: https://www.vice.com/da/article/xd578z/i-ghostwrote-hundreds-of-chinese-students-ivy-league-admissions-essays-897 https://www.vice.com/da/article/xd578z/i-ghostwrote-hundreds... [0] I don't have much sympathy for the cheaters or those writing these essays rationalizing it via whatever excuse is most convenient (though at least in the essay linked above she feels bad about it). For every one of them there are many dealing with difficult stuff and also not cheating. There is a deeper issue here with admissions, selling prestige by enforcing scarcity. A lot of things become signaling rather than actually about learning. Hopefully we'll see better options for a lot of this in the future. --- [0]: "Of course, I didn’t have time for moral quandaries. As my name became more popular, I found myself with more clients than I had time to help. I couldn’t interview all of them, so I needed to find a way to produce essays faster. My solution: writing about my own intimate experiences. "One December evening, I used one of my most embarrassing moments as the basis for an essay for a 17-year-old Chinese girl who had never desired something she could not afford. The event happened shortly after my father abandoned my family when I was a kid, leaving us broke. Our water and lights were turned off, and my mom was working multiple jobs to support us. Since we lacked utilities, my mother washed our laundry at the local Laundromat. One day, she left our laundry at the Laundromat while she went to finish errands. When she returned, she discovered that someone had stolen our clothes from the washer. The stolen laundry comprised most of the clothes we owned, so my mother took my sister and me to Goodwill to buy clothes. A classmate spotted me at the thrift store, and the next day at school, she pointed at me and called me poor in front of my entire English class. "As a college admissions essay, this story was pure gold. You could wrap anything around the story, and it would work, especially since students love rags-to-riches tales. "Except, my life was still made up of rags. Nothing exemplified my rags better than me sitting in front of the laptop, preparing to sell this still wounded part of myself for $400, but without any debate, I emailed the essay to my 17-year-old client. "The loss hit me immediately. Looking at my closed computer, I felt like a stranger to myself. Every time I used my weaknesses and memorable moments in my clients’ essays, I felt a part of myself disappear. Already floundering in that directionless void of post-college life, I began to lose the one anchor I had: myself. "I don’t know what I was expecting in return from the student. Would my client feel the pain of the story and then question the ethics of using another person’s life as an admissions essay? Would she call me and thank me for cutting out a personal part of my heart for her? Later, I received a one-word email from her: “Thanks.” The message stung. I thought about the itchy Goodwill sweater and how much itchier it had felt as I cried after my classmate mocked me. I had given up a private piece of myself for the bargain price of $400. I logged off and shut down my laptop."