
I Ghostwrite Chinese Students' Ivy League Admissions Essays - misiti3780
http://www.vice.com/read/i-ghostwrote-hundreds-of-chinese-students-ivy-league-admissions-essays-897
======
nicolax
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
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.

------
asdfologist
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.

~~~
austenallred
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.

~~~
blackbagboys
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

------
jurassic
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
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!

~~~
cgio
"It's wrong to do others work for them and let them represent it as their own"

which is what I do in my everyday job. And I am not shadow-writing, I am a
consultant...Writing ideas that superiors represent as their own, or clients
do. I guess this is capitalism, life or something. And someone not worth it
has to be promoted before I do, as in the author's case someone has to be
admitted for her to live.

~~~
sk5t
Your ideas and work product are the ideas and work product of the
organization, which your superiors represent... different kettle of fish.

~~~
ghshephard
I had a friend who got her degree from UC Berkeley, and maybe wrote 5-10% of
her work, she had other people (Friends, Lovers, colleagues) write all the
others - she was a master of manipulation.

Who is to say that the valuable skill she developed wasn't her delegation and
management skills, and that those were far more important in the long term
than her ability to wax poetically about Plato's Republic?

The fact that she had to write that 5-10%, and do the occasional in class
essay, that she did okay in, suggests that not writing the other 90-95% didn't
seem to negatively impact her, "Learning Experience."

What I find particularly humorous, of course, is that all these random people,
none of whom had taken any of the course work, or background that she
presumably had, and many of them without college degrees, were capable of
whipping out a paper with a day or two of research (under her guidance, and
with a bit of her editing and supplying of facts) that passed muster at
Berkeley.

~~~
1337biz
How did it turn our for her? Is that strategy working for her after college as
well?

~~~
ghshephard
Good question. She has a degree from Cal., so that opens doors for her. Last I
checked she was VP of marketing for a chain of Valero gas stations in
California. Much of her work seems to consist of negotiating large sums of
money from various vendors for placing their products/refrigerators at key
locations in their stores. It's astonishing what a generic-brand ice-cream
vendor will pay a gas station to replace Hagen Daz with their brand of ice-
cream.

I've watched her at work, and really, it seems like she's mostly an excel
jockey who dresses well, drives a nice vehicle and takes a _lot_ of meetings
with vendors.

Honestly - It's not clear to me that she couldn't have done exactly the same
thing without her degree - she got a B.S. in Conservation and Resource
studies. What she's doing now seems entirely unrelated.

~~~
lancewiggs
You've pretty much identified her with this description. Did you mean to?

------
gaoshan
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.

~~~
lmm
I went to a laundromat in Shanghai once. Maybe they only exist around the
trendy western-style apartment neighbourhoods, but they do exist.

~~~
vorg
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
Right, but you wouldn't have your clothes stolen from that kind. The point is
it's automatic and (at least mostly) unattended.

------
Bahamut
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
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
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.

------
soneca
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
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
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
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.

------
Yardlink
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
Fairness is not concomitant to a spare 2K$.

~~~
Yardlink
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
> 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"?

~~~
argonaut
Everyone makes typos. Give it a rest.

------
usea
At $400 a piece, often including lengthy interviews and an overwhelming
demand, the author should raise their rates. Probably by an order of
magnitude.

~~~
mrottenkolber
Agree. $400 seems awfully low. What does a PR guy get for a piece?

~~~
ghaff
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.

------
johan_larson
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
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.

~~~
elwell
> GitHub portfolios

The tricky thing is that github profiles don't always make obvious the amount
of _real_ , _quality_ code someone is producing. It's often hidden away in
private company repos, or, on the other hand, appears to be an impressive list
of contributions but when you investigate it is mostly minor changes and
grammar/typo pull requests.

------
eck
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.

------
westiseast
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.

------
heterogenic
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/...](http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/application-
process/Pages/default.aspx)) 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
> 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
Evidence of what?

You can see the admissions essay requirements on the linked page.

------
Mz
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
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

------
metacorrector
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.

~~~
abustamam
What I want to know is what the difference between ghostwriting for school
purposes, and ghostwriting for literary purposes, is.

Hillary Clinton and Ronald Reagan (and many others) had their autobiographies
ghostwritten [1] and no one seems to really care. The definition of
"autobiography" means a biography of yourself, written by you. So why do we
hold different standards to academia as opposed to non-academia?

When you hire a web designer to design a website, you aren't obligated to
credit the designer (if the designer doesn't mind).

I can certainly see why copying someone's essay or test answers would be
cheating, and should be penalized. In a standardized curriculum the students
should become proficient at the subject matter by the degree program. Allowing
students to cheat would lessen the value of the degree and thus no one would
want to attend that school.

But ghostwriting for college admissions? It's doing whatever you can to
increase your odds of acceptance. Some people pay money for test prep (most of
which is just vocabulary drilling). Some people pay money for "college
counseling." Some people pay money for personal statements.

Some commenters here are saying that ghostwriting personal statements makes it
unfair for the lower-income families, but test prep is definitely not cheap.
SAT prep could go anywhere from $500 to $1000, for a weekend course. No lower-
income family could afford SAT prep, so if we view ghostwriting as "unfair"
then test prep should be unfair by the same logic.

If someone doesn't want to hire me because we hold different views on the
definition of cheating, then I respect the person's opinion but I certainly
wouldn't want to be hired due to too many clashes of views most likely.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter)

~~~
lutusp
> What I want to know is what the difference between ghostwriting for school
> purposes, and ghostwriting for literary purposes, is.

Easily explained. Ghostwriting in academia is a violation of academic ethics,
a basis for expulsion or withdrawal of a granted degree. Ghostwriting in the
everyday world is accepted, indeed it's not uncommon to see a ghostwriter's
name alongside the putative author's name on the book's cover. In fact, that
represents the only acceptable use of a ghostwriter, by simply acknowledging
his contribution.

> No lower-income family could afford SAT prep, so if we view ghostwriting as
> "unfair" then test prep should be unfair by the same logic.

Yes, there's some logic there, but ghostwriting doesn't expose the student to
the material to be learned, but test prep does. One might even argue that all
classroom time is test prep.

~~~
abustamam
> Ghostwriting in academia is a violation of academic ethics, a basis for
> expulsion or withdrawal of a granted degree

I addressed the academic ethics part in my post. But ghostwriting for a
personal statement? Some employers will definitely look at some
projects/essays you did for the completion of the degree if they are relevant
to the job (making cheating in that sense impractical), but I've never heard
of any employers asking for the personal statement that got them accepted into
a college.

> ghostwriting doesn't expose the student to the material to be learned, but
> test prep does

Personal statements don't have any material to be learned to begin with. I
don't have anything to back up this statement, as this is all anecdotal, but
those who spend more time preparing for a test are more likely to do better,
as much of test prep is simply rote memorization/practice. A bad writer
writing a personal statement can spend weeks writing his personal statement
and it can still be crap, but a good writer writing a personal statement can
produce a pretty good first draft.

Some will say that a bad writer should send the personal statement to a
proofreader or editor, but then comes the question--where do we draw the line
between proofreader/editor and ghostwriter? The experiences in the final
product are likely to be the submitter's own experiences (unless the
ghostwriter adds his/her own experiences as in this article), but much of the
content will certainly not be from the submitter's first draft.

What's the difference between sending a first draft to an editor and having
them add eloquent language and coherent stories, and sending a few basic
facts/experiences to a ghostwriter? Is it the percentage of original content?

------
readme
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.

------
eruditely
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.

------
fndrplayer13
This story really irks me but honestly its not like cheating in developing
countries like India and China is anything new.

~~~
conradfr
It's not cheating it's unipersonal growth hacking.

~~~
fndrplayer13
Yeah, you're right ;)

------
JulianMorrison
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.

------
disjointrevelry
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.

------
damoncali
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.

------
cinquemb
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…

------
FlyingLawnmower
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).

------
ohashi
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
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-
ch...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8662224/Chinese-cheats-rort-
NZ-universities-with-fakes)

------
blutoot
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.

------
canadev
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
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."

------
Padding
> 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).

------
dchichkov
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.

------
dools
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
> 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
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
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
She should have charged way more! She showed how absurd the higher education
industry is - that's worth way more than 1k / week

------
Paul12345534
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.

------
Gustomaximus
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.

------
hurtmyknee
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?

------
aaronbrethorst
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
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.

------
spamizbad
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
Likely so.

------
lazyant
After a minimum objective criteria (grades etc), just make admissions random,
all this gaming stuff is silly

------
0003
Sidebar - for those who wrote admissions essays - do you remember what you
wrote?

~~~
praneshp
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.

------
Balgair
"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.

------
foobarqux
Can anyone recommend admission consultants or give any advice about using
them? I want to help a highschooler out.

~~~
sehr
Asking for consultancy advice in the comments section of an article focused on
cheating that very system.

Is this what we've come to?

------
rokhayakebe
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
Because it's written by a woman who writes essays for Chinese students.

~~~
jtzhou
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
>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.

