Are College Application Essays Obsolete?

From my own experience here in Korea, where the elite families pay thousands of dollars for tutors to "help" their kids write their application essays for top-tier US colleges, my answer would be a resounding "Ya think?"

The director of admissions at Cambridge does. He says...

that his institution does not give any weight to personal essays in applications. “With the profusion of companies and Web sites offering to help draft applicants’ personal statements for a fee, no admissions tutor believes them to be the sole work of the applicant anymore,” Geoff Parks was quoted as saying in both The Times and The Guardian. “We certainly don’t assign any marks to personal statements,” Mr. Parks added in The Times.

He adds teacher references to the obsolete pile, too:

"now that students can ask to see their references, teachers have stopped saying anything interesting or controversial,” The Times reported, and those recommendations are therefore also given little weight.

While we're at it, let's add the SAT itself to the pile. It's no secret that money buys higher SAT scores, and parents who can pay are willing to. Walk down any street in Seoul, and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an SAT cram school.

photo by oceandesetoiles