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I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays

• aaronbrethorst 12y ago
  I appreciate the typo in the second paragraph. Gave me a good chuckle: factory tycoon’s daughters as opposed to the plural possessive "tycoons' daughters"
  • erikpukinskis 12y ago
    I actually think it's fine as it is. Each variation has slightly different meaning: tycoon's daughters - the group of daughters, each of whom belongs to a tycoon tycoons' daughters - the group of daughters, who are something that belongs to the whole class of tycoons The choice really changes the extent to which it's the daughters or the tycoons being described. You could certainly argue it's incorrect, but that's a philosophy of grammar that I think makes writing less interesting.
• asdfologist 12y ago
  First 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.
  • jacquesm 12y ago
    The big question then is how do they make out in real life afterwards compared to their honest brothers & sisters who also entered those same colleges and compared to those that didn't make the cut because of them. At a guess, they'll do better in life than the ones that didn't make it but not as good as the ones that were honest and made it but I have zero proof for that. It's just that they will get some of the benefits from these colleges but not all of them while the group that didn't make it gets none.
    • w1ntermute 12y ago
      > they'll do better in life than the ones that didn't make it but not as good as the ones that were honest and made it If this is true, then less-than-deserving children will have successfully used their parents' wealth to artificially improve their station in life. Which means that our higher education system is helping to perpetuate class divides (even though it claims to be greatly interested in not doing so).
      • hkmurakami 12y ago
        Legacy admissions (which is alive and well at my alma mater) definitely helps to perpetuate this as well.
        • w1ntermute 12y ago
          That's true, but legacy admissions is out in the open - universities acknowledge the existence of the practice. But the inequality created by ghostwriting and admissions coaching is particularly pernicious because it occurs through a system that the universities claim is meant and supposed to give everyone an equal shot.
      • joesmo 12y ago
        Of course it does. Look at the price of tuition. That perpetuates class divides more than any other factor.
        • w1ntermute 12y ago
          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.
          • 12y ago
  • hkmurakami 12y ago
    While the college consultants certainly increased the number of such students, such students have always existed, at least in the past couple of decades. I myself can't say that 100% of my extracurricular activities were free from wanting to look good for college applications. My GPA was definitely boosted by my somewhat misplaced desire to get into the best university I could possibly get into, rather than through a pure passion for learning. I totally kissed a teacher's butt in one class because 20% of the grade in that class was "participation", and was entirely based on how much said teacher liked you (she was subsequently let go -- private school). I sold my soul in order to get an A in that class. And I'm definitely not an isolated case.
  • mathetic 12y ago
    Exactly but I see nothing wrong with this. If universities are willing to accept students not based on merit but on a touching story, then they had it coming. People who admit one to these universities in general are not alumni of that school, did not go through the same experience and are not experts in the subject one wants to study. It is ludicrous to expect them to differentiate good candidates from bad ones. Also general criticism to above seems to be that it is not feasible to deal with all the applicants. That claim is bogus since Oxford and Cambridge professors are conducting multiple technical interviews with each candidate for centuries for both domestic and international students. EDIT: Loving down voting without explanation for a reasonable opinion on the subject.
    • sehr 12y ago
      Exactly but I see nothing wrong with this. I'm sure those other applicants who were turned down in favor of these are fine with it as well
      • mlvljr 12y ago
        u must be a communist, right?
        • sehr 12y ago
          Yes, I am a communist for thinking that complete dishonesty in an admissions essay of all things is pitiful and wrong. Same goes towards those who had theirs heavily edited by family members/friends/consultants etc..
        • blink281 12y ago
          I'm not sure if you're joking or not but in case you're not this mindset is exactly what happened under communist regimes where children of the inner "party members" were given every advantage possible over their "prol" counterparts. But no, destroying an ecosystem you depend on in the long term and subsequently your future with it because some cynical foreign money-bags type holds out a few extra dollars they no doubt obtained through lucrative government connections is a great example of ... what is it you would call the counter-example of what you think the above poster is? A capitalist?
  • rayiner 12y ago
    > 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. I don't really get this perspective. If colleges are going to base admissions on amorphous things like what clubs someone joined, or what organizations they volunteered for, why shouldn't a student hire a consultant to navigate those waters? Is the student who hires a consultant to tell them what classes to take, or what clubs to join, or what organizations to volunteer for, and then follows through with those, less deserving of a spot than someone that happens to randomly fall upon the right combination of activities? Or, more to the point, has an uncle who went to an Ivy-league school that can give them the same advice? If anything, admissions consultants level the playing field. Who else is going to tell a bright midwestern student that Ivy-league schools don't respect locally popular clubs like Future Farmers of America? Who else is going to tell a bright lower-income student that they should spend their summers "volunteering" in Africa instead of working all summer to make some spending money? The families with Ivy-league alums already know what boxes to check.
    • canjobear 12y ago
      It's hard to see how this levels the playing field in practice. The "bright lower-income students" you mention don't have access to these expensive services.
      • rayiner 12y ago
        These admissions consultants are a lot more attainable than the Ivy-league family members that would be able to give the same guidance.
        • foobarqux 12y ago
          The real problem is that they don't know the game, which is most of the battle.
      • delg 12y ago
        Not necessarily true. I personally know 2 Ivy League grads from low income families who, through a combination of luck and high standardized test scores, lucked into a position of getting this kind of counseling. Lots of consultants do some amount of pro bono. Most poor kids wouldn't know to ask, though.
  • austenallred 12y ago
    I was paid $50/hour for quite some time to do "marketing consulting" for a company started by a douchebag studying at Harvard. It was vaguely interesting work, and I over delivered on every expectation, but grew tired of his increasingly demanding explanations (pages long at times) of why I did what I did and who the market was. Those two questions were asked of me obsessively. Eventually, after I told him I was sick of doing write ups that were completely unnecessary, he admitted he was taking a marketing class at Harvard. I was unknowingly doing all of his exercises, and he would turn my write ups in to the Professor. Apparently he got an A.
    • DanBC 12y ago
      Weren't you tempted to inform the professor?
    • elwell 12y ago
      What? That's a crazy story.
    • ganeumann 12y ago
      I assume he was getting his degree in "management".
    • blackbagboys 12y ago
      In a similar vein, one of my bosses at a major investment bank would gleefully tell interns about how, in undergrad, while working part-time for a Congressman, he would call up the Congressional Research Service and commission reports that he would later doctor up and hand in as term papers
    • TheSoftwareGuy 12y ago
      Please tell me you reported him to the professor?
• usea 12y ago
  At $400 a piece, often including lengthy interviews and an overwhelming demand, the author should raise their rates. Probably by an order of magnitude.
  • asdfologist 12y ago
    Not to mention that her target clientele have deep pockets.
  • mrottenkolber 12y ago
    Agree. $400 seems awfully low. What does a PR guy get for a piece?
    • ghaff 12y ago
      PR isn't done on a piece basis unless it's really low rent, in which case it's not worth however little you spend. Normally there's a retainer of some sort into the considerable thousands of dollars. A typical press release including working with the client on messaging and getting supporting quotes, etc. probably costs into the thousands.
• soneca 12y ago
  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.
  • sliverstorm 12y ago
    IMO with a consultant, you aren't passing someone else's work off as your own, which is the truly dishonest part. Soliciting help, even if it is for pay, is not against the rules to my memory. I know I had friends and family read my essays.
    • soneca 12y ago
      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)
      • Mz 12y ago
        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.
• fndrplayer13 12y ago
  This story really irks me but honestly its not like cheating in developing countries like India and China is anything new.
  • conradfr 12y ago
    It's not cheating it's unipersonal growth hacking.
    • fndrplayer13 12y ago
      Yeah, you're right ;)
  • msie 12y ago
    Sorry, everyone cheats.
  • incog 12y ago
    Yeah chinks like to cheat.
• 0003 12y ago
  Sidebar - for those who wrote admissions essays - do you remember what you wrote?
  • Mz 12y ago
    Not really. Or, maybe not at all. But I am 49 and also had a medical crisis that involved taking a whole bunch of meds. So my memory is not what it used to be.
  • praneshp 12y ago
    I do, because I have managed to not do one single thing that I wrote. Some I knew were half-truths when I wrote them, some I had to give up because my interests changed between applying and starting MS (which is an almost one-year gap, in the final year of your undergrad), and I changed specializations.
  • corpselord420 12y ago
    i stole a heartbreaking anecdote that a girl in my senior high school class wrote about her grandmother dying or something
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • morgante 12y ago
    Yup. It was a couple years ago, but I actually put a good deal of thought into it (probably had 20 drafts). Despite the edits, it was not at all contrived. Nothing was made up, and it was based on an actual 270-mile hike I did. Ended up doing pretty well for me too (lots of Ivy acceptances). Total cost of my actual application process: $50 (for some registration fee).
  • narsil 12y ago
    Yup. Wrote about a state-wide competition I participated in and how I approached it. Helps that I did well in it.
• johan_larson 12y ago
  Paul Graham had some interesting things to say about the value of elite college degrees back in 2007: http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html 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?
  • superuser2 12y ago
    I would argue that modern, prestigious tech companies use GitHub portfolios like admissions counselors use activity leadership and transcripts. You're required to use all of your free time, and then a little more, to demonstrate that you have initiative and grit, that you don't need to sleep adequately or spend time on anything other than the "right" activities. Roughly analogous to taking hard classes and participating in lots of activities. Colleges don't want you "hanging out," and Facebook doesn't want you sailing or running a community theater group or raising kids or something, they want you sharpening your skills. Both employers and colleges are basically looking at, "how many hours per week do you spend on impressing us?" Proving that you ran a chronic sleep deficit and had no more than a couple of hours downtime outside of what they want to see gets you past the first cut. Then, to make the next cut, the quality of the code you write needs to be exceptionally high (indicating that you really invested the time and that whatever your cognitive function declined to was still great.) Is your code elegant and clever? Did you write painstakingly thorough tests? Is everything perfectly documented? This is roughly analogous to having stellar grades in your AP/honors/advanced classes. Next, as a tie-breaker, they look for interestingness. Were the apps you wrote/clubs you started innovative? Did they merely demonstrate that you are generally good at things, or did they actually make an impact on the world? (There is generally a field on the applications to elite colleges for you to submit your published, peer-reviewed scientific papers. As a 17-year-old.) That may fast-track you to the top, but lacking it won't necessarily kill you unless you're elbowed out by people who do have it. And finally, the interview/essays. Do you write exceptionally well? Are you well-spoken? Do we like you? Do you seem like one of us? Colleges use this to keep the common threads they're interested in (at my alma mater, it's no accident that every single one of us identifies, whether obnoxiously or quietly, as an intellectual, and as much as we complain, being surrounded by people like that is kind of exactly what we're paying for). Then they create the distributions they're looking for in other elements of personality (i.e. we have to reject some bassoon virtuosos to make room for the virtuoso cellists, and we're going to need to sprinkle in a few outgoing socialites to keep the awkward nerds from killing themselves.) Though I guess some employers and possibly colleges are only going for homogeneity - the IBM of old is notorious. It seems that basically every college and/or employer is oriented towards behaving this way, but the defining characteristic of the elite communities (whether they are corporations or universities) is that they are closer to filling their slots without "settling" on anyone. The composition of applicant pools between institutions is not random or uniform. Certain schools only have a profile in more-intellectual circles, and I imagine it's the same with tech companies. A school may have a 2% acceptance rate among an applicant pool whose median ACT is 15. Or a school may have a 75% acceptance rate because only the overachiever children of academically elite families and school systems have heard of it. So eliteness is not necessarily acceptance rate, but more like "lack of settling." Recruiting activity may be focused on places where smart people are likely to be more dense, but it does seem that some companies are starting to play "admissions counselor" for themselves when evaluating applicants, looking at GitHub rather than your degree.
• Mz 12y ago
  So 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?
  • Ygg2 12y ago
    Probably. I think Mark Rosewater the designer of Magic the Gathering feels that way. For you not to feel cheap or cheated you need to love your job, be payed for it and be good at it. Finding all three is next to impossible
  • morgante 12y ago
    > Surely, there are people in the world who are not destitute and who don't feel like they are selling their soul? Yup! I make great money and also strongly believe in what I'm doing (building a platform to showcase great writing). She's helping people cheat their way into college. The soul-crushing nature of that is absolutely appropriate, and hopefully a mechanism for ending her unethical ways.
  • wpietri 12y ago
    I know plenty of people who feel like they have a good balance between money and satisfaction with what they're doing. Indeed, I think it's a lot easier to be financially successful doing something that you find energizing rather than soul-sucking. I do believe, though, that you are unlikely to get maximum dollars and maximum joy from the same job. Many terrible jobs pay more because they have to. E.g., I used to work in finance, which was lucrative but awful. Whereas many nonprofits get great people at relatively modest salaries because they are, in effect, paying people in meaning. So a lot of the people I know who are happy with both their jobs and their paychecks do it by living more modestly than they could if they were only about the benjamins.
• eck 12y ago
  The bit about selling her soul seemed a bit contrived. They don't have to be the applicants' stories, but they don't have to be the ghostwriter's story either -- once it's no longer a true story for the applicant, whether it's your story or total fiction seems irrelevant. The part about interviewing the applicants made me wonder whether there is any fact checking of essays, or whether there will be in the future. The story about being poor and having your clothes stolen from a laundromat is a real tearjerker, but if the admissions officer knows that you're the child of China's 99th richest business magnate, I doubt it would help.
• rokhayakebe 12y ago
  I am not sure why this is directed towards China. There are certainly more Americans paying Americans to write their essays every semester. EDIT: Oh Fucking ??, guys what is up with the downvotes? This is just idiotic. If you disagree, voice it. It's ok, perhaps I am mistaken, enlighten me. But downvoting without giving a comment is like telling me I am wrong without giving me a direction. "You wouldn't laugh at someone who was going the wrong direction if you could correct them, would you?" Lord! Now as far as the this article, paying for someone to write essays is not particular to China. I did this for some people. IN. THE. US. People do this for others in other countries. The article could have still held its value without the Chinese part. It sounds condescending.
  • learc83 12y ago
    Because it's written by a woman who writes essays for Chinese students.
    • jtzhou 12y ago
      She writes for anyone who is willing to pay her $400 per essay. It is not just for the children of wealthy Chinese, and many Chinese people choose to write their own. The system is broken if it cannot distinguish between a fraudulent essay and real one and is using that measure as integral for admissions. Many universities have specialized questions (almost as a CAPTCHA) to make sure students are serious about applying there. Test scores, teacher evaluations, and an applicant's résumé are often much more important criteria.
      • learc83 12y ago
        >She writes for anyone who is willing to pay her $400 per essay. It is not just for the children of wealthy Chinese... I'm sure she wouldn't turn down $400 from anyone, but she makes it pretty clear throughout the essay that the vast majority of her clients are the children of wealthy Chinese. >many Chinese people choose to write their own. No one is saying that all Chinese students pay someone to write their essays. > Test scores, teacher evaluations, and an applicant's résumé are often much more important criteria. True, but these are easily gamed too if you've got the money, especially in these cases where distance and language barriers makes everything harder to verify.
• cinquemb 12y ago
  I think dynamics like these are pretty interesting, reminds me of a convo with phd student I work with about taking classes he could care less about and I said pretty soon people will probably be using google glass or contacts that they can leverage during exams and a sign of it working will be when universities start trying to crack down on such behavior despite such things making students more efficient in a system that has seemed to focus on everything but what it sells itself as (at least idealized at its "best")… all in all, just another symptom of another system moving to obsolescence. "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." Also interesting to see how individuals seem to internalize the dynamics of the larger systems they operate within. What's more void: someone engaging in such a behavior as the author in this system or similar behavior in other systems, or any system that incentivizes such behavior through various mechanisms that people who (or would like to) consider themselves not destitute/sellout/whatever-flavor-of-the-day, live their lives by and submit themselves to? I posit neither or both…
• jurassic 12y ago
  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 think the clients missed out on much learning value by outsourcing it. Why are college courses giving "major" assignments that can reasonably be completed in 5-10 hours by a smart person with no training in the field? If a college degree just means you banged out a bunch of garbage essays, as it does for many people based on the assignments I saw contracted out, should we really be outraged that some people are not doing the work themselves? I would argue that the real scandal is not that some people are paying for help, but that many degree programs demand so little in terms of knowledge and thought that they can be easily gamed in this way. I would like to see fluffy degree programs ended, so that legitimate work in the humanities can continue without anyone wasting time and resources shuffling average Joes through the pipeline to middle class office jobs. The most surprising discovery for me was that it seemed like after foreign language students the heaviest users of the service were education majors. No joke. I never figured out if the noticeably heavy use by education majors was a selection bias caused by the way the service was advertising itself, a sign of especially low ethics among education majors, or an indication that there might be a higher incidence of lifestyle factors (e.g. going to school while working full time) that made it difficult for them to crank out all the BS assignments required of them. It's also interesting to me that the author of this piece seems to be an independent contractor whose business increased as she became known. Generally, I would expect ghostwriters to want to keep a low profile which makes it hard to be independent. I certainly didn't want anyone knowing how I was paying the bills when I was in it. And unless you are charging top-end rates, the overhead of marketing yourself and picking up envelopes of cash at Starbucks is probably an inefficient use of time. Both of these factors mean that a lot of people end up working for agencies that do the work of finding clients and managing payments, and also provide double blinding. So the writer never knows the identity of the client, and vice versa. It's a pretty good system overall.
  • WoodenChair 12y ago
    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, do not receive them. It might just be a mundane 10 hour essay, but that person may not have had the time management skills, writing skills, or will to do it and therefore should not have received the marks that he did. On the other hand, if you didn't do it, somebody else would - but again that's a rationalization!
• spamizbad 12y ago
  What happens to these students when they enter their required writing composition/rhetoric classes? Do they just pay someone to do all of that work too?
  • nness 12y ago
    Likely so.
• eruditely 12y ago
  This reminds me of what PG writes in a start up idea essay. "Actually, startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Nothing evolves faster than markets. The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless." So a decent heuristic to see if something is able to be gamified is to look for potential hidden black markets to see if it possible, then you see see how to invest your time. In this case it seems like it would be the best choice to hire someone on an opportunity cost basis.
• foobarqux 12y ago
  Can anyone recommend admission consultants or give any advice about using them? I want to help a highschooler out.
  • sehr 12y ago
    Asking for consultancy advice in the comments section of an article focused on cheating that very system. Is this what we've come to?
• westiseast 12y ago
  When I studied at a university in Fuzhou, I wrote a fair few things for friends (both students and teachers) - admissions applications, letters of reference, essays, correspondence etc. Some was just helping with language errors, some was translation and some was just downright faking (ie. "my professor is my brothers cousins uncles best friend, he said you can write whatever you want"). I figured I wrote my fair share of bullshit on my university application and subsequent job forms, so this wasn't much different... One of the most common problems was just about bridging the gap between Chinese/Western expectations - Chinese reference letters are sometimes pages long, and filled with flowery and extravagant language to describe the candidate, whereas a Western reference letter would be concise, professional and often maybe just 2-3 short paragraphs.
• hurtmyknee 12y ago
  To be blunt, this article makes me sick. An admission essay is one of many ingredients to the meal that makes a great candidate. If all the other metrics are aligned, why does one need to hire a professional writer?
• Yardlink 12y ago
  I used to work for a company writing application essays for Chinese students. I didn't write them myself but I have no moral objection. The requirements are bizarre - effectively "tell us what you know will make us like you but hide the fact that you know we want to hear it". Should you tell the truth "I love CS and play it in all my spare time, I'm obsessed with it and usually don't get enough sleep for school because I'm so committed staying up late at night shooting people" or tell a story about an incident at the beach that makes it look like you have amazing management skills? Who knows! University selection is ridiculous and I support any attempt to bring fairness to it like these services.
  • kansface 12y ago
    Fairness is not concomitant to a spare 2K$.
    • Yardlink 12y ago
      It opens doors for some people who wouldn't have been able to otherwise. But more importantly, I hope this type of cheating leads universities to change their selection processes so applicants don't have to play this second-guessing game. I feel like the university staff are fools being deceived by this nonsense. That they actually give weigh to the application essay shows they're not making a fair decisions.
      • lutusp 12y ago
        > But more importantly, I hope this type of cheating leads universities to change their selection processes so applicants don't have to play this second-guessing game. Well-heeled parents who dote on their children, and who regard a college education as an absolute must, represent a formidable natural force to be reckoned with. They will always think of a way to see their children treated with favor. "I'm donating ¥100,000,000 for your library. Oh, by the way, have you met my son?" > That they actually give weigh to the application essay shows they're not making a fair decisions. "give weigh"?
        • 12y ago
• metacorrector 12y ago
  YCombinator is all tied up with VCs and incubators and such, right? In other contexts such as applying for various types of placements, are people's comment histories reviewed (including whatever amount of doxing is possible via server logs etc) to weed out "bad eggs"? Cuz, I sure wouldn't hire anybody on here who is condoning or defending in any way cheating in school, even in the most oblique way.
  • waterlesscloud 12y ago
    I wonder if there are "HN Posting Consultants" that help you get into YC? I also wonder how much I'm kidding when I say that.
    • saalweachter 12y ago
      Better yet, is there a sharing economy startup for essay writing yet?
      • lutusp 12y ago
        I can see the startup's pitch already: "Sell your soul, contribute to the systematic erosion of civilized values, undermine everyone's idea of fair play -- all this without having to become a lawyer!"
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  • 12y ago
• Bahamut 12y ago
  This is a bit disheartening to me, but not surprising. I know of several people who have used this type of service, and some who have provided it. For me, my essay was the difference in attending the likes of Harvard - my essay was egregiously bad, and it was explained to me by the director of admissions of one Ivy League school via a family friend who was a professor at that same university as the primary reason for rejecting me, even though by all other metrics I was an almost stellar candidate, even out of those they typically admitted. I wonder how many people have gamed the system like such, and what effect has it had on the lives of those who would have otherwise attended those schools? For me, I have miraculously succeeded in my path, although it was a pretty unique one - the confidence I built before college in my abilities helped me overcome the setback. There are many people not so fortunate though. We probably will never know the true effects of such unintended gaming, but it goes to show that people shouldn't take as much stock in the school someone attended but their pure mind in industry.
  • chobo 12y ago
    I'll never understand the mindset where not going to an Ivy is a "setback." That's not meant to be an insult at all, if it sounded like one. Good for you for having that attitude, of course, but that's such a foreign state of mind to me. I stumbled across the finish line in high school and self-destructed in college. Things have worked out but I wonder what even a small change in state of mind would have done for me as an adolescent.
    • Bahamut 12y ago
      Part of it was my fault - I only applied to a select 5 schools initially, since an Ivy was supposed to be a fallback due to connections & strength of academics. In hindsight, it was pretty foolish of me. I ended up attending a state school, applying last minute in April.
      • Chronic29 12y ago
        Going to an ivy league provides enormous benefits not present at any other state or private school. So yes, not going to an ivy is a setback.
• nicolax 12y ago
  As a Chinese student who applied to US grad schools 2 years ago, this story is interesting and somewhat sad to me, even though I always know such ghostwriting exists in China. Unlike the wealthy Chinese students described in this story, my family is poor--even paying the application fees is no easy. Besides, I really don't like being unauthentic and cheating. I wrote all the essays myself, without buying any guides or paying anyone. Just like in this story, I searched every corner of my world and put in pieces that most represent myself. The writing process took me 3 months, which was an incredible learning experience. In the spring when I was doing a video chat with a professor from UBC, she asked me whether I had any native speaker to help on my writing (legit to ask, I should say). One month later, I got a personal email from the chair of NYU Tisch school of Arts, that he's moved and impressed by my essay. It was reassuring the efforts paid off (at least it stood out from the fake authenticity). That fall I came to Stanford. Thanks to Chinese education, Chinese students are usually very weak on independent thinking, we're trained to give standard answers and follow certain scripts. Applying for schools abroad is a good opportunity to re-think and re-learn. But apparently all the "consulting" services, ghostwriters have provided again, crutch to rely on and scripts to follow. After coming to the US, as they probably haven't thought clearly about why they came here, many Chinese students fail to make the best use of their time here. It can also water down the quality of education programs, as some of the students are under-qualified or not motivated.
  • rxin 12y ago
    It is an oversimplification to link "Chinese students are usually very weak on independent thinking" to "many Chinese students fail to make the best use of their time here". Many American students also fail to make the best use of their time in America. As a matter of fact, if I had to guess based on the people I know, the average (international) Chinese student in American is probably harder working than the average American student.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• Gustomaximus 12y ago
  Given the openness of ghost writing and the ease of video communication there seems to be benefit in institutions moving this process to a one-to-one interview, or at least to a post essay interview.
• dchichkov 12y ago
  I guess at some point these essays would simply be filtered out through author identification systems. If not already. Even if the accuracy of author identification is relatively low (80-85%?), just the thought that there is such a system in place should discourage students from cheating. As to proof-reading and consultants, more power to them. Everyone should bounce their work at professionals in the area, before publishing it. It is a very good practice.
• damoncali 12y ago
  Anyone who has been to a high end business school will not be surprised by this in the slightest. Chinese (and others - lets not pick on the Chinese alone here) students who can't speak English, and yet were scoring 700+ on the GMAT are a dime a dozen. Everyone knows it, including the admissions departments - but they're under orders to increase the "international" percentage of the student body lest they get painted as "too waspy". It's a racket.
• dools 12y ago
  She only charges $400?! That's crazy. What Ivy leagure candidate COULDN'T afford that? At those prices I'm surprised anyone writes their own letters.
  • lutusp 12y ago
    > She only charges $400?! That's crazy. That's ¥2,500.00. The current median Chinese income is ¥63,875 ($10,220). So one essay produces 4% of a typical annual income, for what might only be a few hours' work. Twenty essays, and you're approaching the median income of your harder-working neighbors.
    • scintill76 12y ago
      You seem to be saying the ghostwriter is a Chinese person living in China, but she wrote, "I’m a second-generation Korean American." Some quick Googling suggests the U.S. median income is around $50,000.
      • kissickas 12y ago
        And if she only charges $400 for 350/3 essays per year, she makes about $47k. I can't fathom why she doesn't raise her rates if she feels like she's selling her soul when she writes about her own experiences.
• sportanova 12y ago
  She should have charged way more! She showed how absurd the higher education industry is - that's worth way more than 1k / week
• heterogenic 12y ago
  It's interesting that one of the only Ivy programs which is essentially immune to this gaming of the system is Harvard Business School, which allows only one semi-optional free-form essay ("What else would you like us to know?":(http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/application-process/Pages/default.aspx http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/application-process/Pages/...) and requires a follow-up letter to every in-person interview. The irony of course is that the scions of empires and children of privilege who are being groomed for leadership essentially get a free pass at admissions. (Which has a sort of logic when you consider that they form the backbone of the class power network almost immediately upon graduation). (As an HBS graduate I have mixed feelings about the overall privilege distribution, but admit to having no plausible suggestions of how to address it.)
  • dd367 12y ago
    > It's interesting that one of the only Ivy programs which is essentially immune to this gaming of the system is Harvard Business School Having known many peers at HBS, I highly doubt the truth of your claim. It seems extremely biased based on your own background. Do you have any evidence?
    • heterogenic 12y ago
      Evidence of what? You can see the admissions essay requirements on the linked page.
• FlyingLawnmower 12y ago
  I for one agree with the top Facebook comment on the article that this piece would be an amazing college admission essay, at least if it wasn't about compromising ethics in college admissions... If only this could actually be used...it definitely serves the purpose of an admission essay (namely, that the author is an excellent writer and clearly intelligent).
• gaoshan 12y ago
  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 seems to care. It would be like a Chinese ghost writer crafting a touching tale of an American kid's mom having to work double shifts in a KTV bar only to return home one night and find that her husband's chou tofu stand had been confiscated by the Chengguan.
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  • lmm 12y ago
    I went to a laundromat in Shanghai once. Maybe they only exist around the trendy western-style apartment neighbourhoods, but they do exist.
    • vorg 12y ago
      They exist inside and around every university and college throughout the Mainland, though not on the street front. You go up the stairs to the 3rd floor, give your bag of washing and 10 rmb to the attendant who tears a playing card in half, gives you one half and staples the other onto your bag. Go back 2 days later for your washed, dried, and folded clothing.
      • lmm 12y ago
        Right, but you wouldn't have your clothes stolen from that kind. The point is it's automatic and (at least mostly) unattended.
  • drited 12y ago
    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 :)
• canadev 12y ago
  It's definitely an interesting read, but I don't know how true it rings to me. > In one admissions cycle, I wrote over a hundred essays and earned enough money to pay my bills for the rest of the year, pay off my car loan, and—as a treat for my hardworking hands—receive $150 Japanese manicures on a biweekly basis. [...] > At the end of every writing season, I always swear I will quit, but I’m still broke with no idea about the shape of my future. Either she's a great writer, and horrible at managing her finances, or she is lying. No?
  • delg 12y ago
    As a lawyer surrounded by highly-compensated lawyers living month to month (with great handbags) this doesn't strike me as suspect. What's that plea of the overtaxed upper-middle class? "You don't understand how little money I have, after I spend it all."
• blutoot 12y ago
  I wonder if US would attract more quality students for the undergrad programs from around the world if it adopted a blind standardized test approach like JEE in India. SAT/ACT aren't comparable to those tests. Anytime you involve something that is open to subjective interpretation like essays that don't need to be created "live", you will open up opportunities for workarounds like this one (i.e. hiring ghost writers). Or maybe tests + interviews is the best combination since interviews bring out character and at the end of the day that's what matters - character.
• ohashi 12y ago
  It's almost certainly not just US schools too. I remember in grad school that some of the students (at least one Chinese sticks out in my mind) were absolutely not fluent English speakers. It was definitely a requirement for the program, but they couldn't manage a coherent sentence, let alone paragraph. Sadly, Sweden is almost entirely group projects, so I think they just got carried through by colleagues despite not being qualified in the slightest. It was frustrating and sad. There were definitely some very smart Chinese people too who should have been there. But I feel bad for the people whose spot they took who might have actually been qualified.
  • beedogs 12y ago
    It's way more than just US schools, and it's way more than just admissions. Entire companies have been set up which are dedicated to helping Chinese students cheat their way through university: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8662224/Chinese-cheats-rort-NZ-universities-with-fakes http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8662224/Chinese-ch...
• Padding 12y ago
  > 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. This is an interesting bit. Why do that? Standard economic theory would suggest increasing prices (and thus margins) as demand increases, rather than actually work more (and thus decrease margins).
• Paul12345534 12y ago
  One of my Filipino friends was doing this sort of work. She did it well and got paid well but she finally quit over ethical concerns. I would find it incredibly entertaining if customer records ever leaked ;) although there'd be no way to authenticate them.
• JulianMorrison 12y ago
  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.
• lazyant 12y ago
  After a minimum objective criteria (grades etc), just make admissions random, all this gaming stuff is silly
• readme 12y ago
  Tons of rationalization for this behavior in the post and in the comments here. There is one reason why this is wrong. When you participate in this kind of business, you are helping to perpetuate inequality in the world and making it less meritocratic, one essay at a time. No need to expound on that I'm sure college educated minds capable of forging essays for profit will get my gist.
• Balgair 12y ago
  "Follow the money." Yes, ethics and all that long interpretative jazz. Give the author credit for taking one step forward, but the money was the motivator. It is the motivator for these kids and their folks to go to the author, for the author to do something unethical, and for the admissions committees to turn a blind eye. The incentives are just too strong here. Follow the money. But why? Why are people spending perfectly good coins on this system? Why are they working long days and weekends to make their kids work long days and weekends at 16 years of age? Why did the author work for them? Why do the admissions do this work, make these easily faked essay requirements that they have to then read? Why? Where is the money going? I don't have a prefect answer, but I do know that Hope and dreams, and all that gummy stuff is the reason. It's a 'get your's' mentality that extends to the family and the children. 'I don't care if my kid cheats, because it's my kid, not your's' Anyone with a semblance of brain will put 2 and 2 together and realize this cannot last. If everyone cheats, then you ruined the world you were trying to get you child into. You are your own worst enemy in this regard. You have no money to follow. And, from reading a lot of the comments here, it seems we are about 30-50% of the way there. We can do the stats there on this tragedy of the commons, but a tipping point has been reached: You'd be a fool to be honest, and now even the biggest dupes know it. Follow the money. So what then? The admissions departments know it, or will have to formally recognize it in about 5-7 years. Then the cat really is out of the bag. And what happens then? It's an arms race like any other. Those with the pockets that reach past the shoes are the only winners. We have see this before may times in history (the exam system of China is most instructive, whole villages had to produce the funds to take the tests, Villages!). And, bob's you uncle, we end up back where we were 200 years ago. Follow the money. Ahh, but no. HNers know better. The internet disrupts everything. It not only levels the field, it makes it inverted. The recent hack of phones, systems and anyone's computer make that world of coin and cash impossible. Admissions committees, even 20 years ago, were saying that it was effectively chance at getting into Stanford. The next 30 sets of classes were just as good as the one they accepted, it was luck. There is no money to follow with luck. So, again, the internet comes into play. We have 30 sets of Stanford students, young people with brains, smarts and access to at least enough capital to get through the tests. Yes, do your stats, but you still get more real smart kids than there are elite colleges to get into, thanks to the internet. Pretty soon, and we're talking under a century, these places get a bad rap, as the admissions just can't keep up and never will. The lesser, the newer, the smaller schools, hell even places that aren't real schools, they get going. The entire idea of an elite school gets to be passe. Why, because the selectivity and the cash just don't make sense to go there. Follow the money. So, we get something that is very different than what we had before. The cash, the aristocracy, it means less. Because money means less. Because status means less, because who the hell cares you went to Harvard or Cal. It's chance getting there anyways. Why waste all the coin and those August Saturday nights of your youth? The money won't make sense there, because the status is eroded, because the internet tells us it's all a lotto anyways, because the admissions departments can't pretend anymore that it's not aristocracy, because the internet tells us, because the coin did make sense before we all knew better. Follow the money.
• disjointrevelry 12y ago
  Ironically, by getting used to dole out work to others (subordinates) by paying them and expecting success is their basic managerial ethos, and one that even predominates modern Western management. This does properly prepare them in a way for management and 'modern' capitalist idealism. They have no feelings of condition to reciprocate any sacrifices of their 'employees' (in this case ghost writers) other than payment. Expecting any kind of reciprocation other than materialism and monetary in a purely capital transaction is a mistake that is common to those not accustomed to the exploitative condition of capital, economics, and enterprise. It was interesting the author indicated the ethnicity of their background in the US. These Chinese masters of OP, who mentioned they were Korean-American where Koreans are looked down upon heavily by China and their adopted country the US, are already well aware that money alone is the primary and only necessary motivator in a capitalist economy and country. The US' only interest in the Korean peninsula is to use it as a point of interaction with the Chinese. These Koreans are not only bootstrapped into being intermediary, but a 'bridge', which both the Chinese and Americans liberally walk all over. It is a bit of a shame the US allowed the victimization the Koreans suffered to be exploited shamelessly by both Americans and the Chinese. The hint of not finding respite, but only exploitation in their adopted land the US, is very telling of the Korean condition.