{"id":5667,"date":"2010-12-27T10:14:55","date_gmt":"2010-12-27T18:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=5667"},"modified":"2010-12-23T10:22:26","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T18:22:26","slug":"the-very-troublesome-existence-of-essay-writing-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/the-very-troublesome-existence-of-essay-writing-services\/","title":{"rendered":"The Very Troublesome Existence of Essay-Writing Services"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece<\/a> written by an anonymous \u201chired gun\u201d who writes admissions essays, term papers, and even doctoral theses for paying students, who in turn pass these off as their own. Not long after that, Bloomberg Businessweek ran a similar article<\/a> that profiled a couple of similar services that write essays for business school applicants. (Veritas Prep was actually mentioned as an ethical alternative to these services in the latter article.)<\/p>\n

Two things really bother us about the existence of these services. Is one of them the fact that they\u2019re unethical and shady? Well, yes, we do think that, but that\u2019s so obvious that we won\u2019t devote any more words to it here.<\/p>\n

The first thing that bothers us is that schools and admissions offices seemingly don\u2019t question how someone with a horrible command of English could create a perfectly constructed essay or research paper. If you are to believe the sources quoted in both articles, these services work well enough that they have thriving businesses with repeat customers. Again, the students who submit these and the hired guns who write them are flaunting the rules of the system, but where are the admissions officers, professors, and university department heads who should easily catch this sort of behavior? You mean to tell me that, as a student with broken English clumsily defends a doctoral thesis that he\u2019s barely read all the way through, the thought of, \u201cI wonder if this is his work,\u201d never crosses their minds?<\/p>\n

Again, that doesn\u2019t excuse such behavior, but we really wonder about who\u2019s minding the shop at these supposedly academically challenging institutions. Just like the TSA may never catch every pen knife that goes through airport security, it\u2019s understandable if a handful of forged academic papers slip through the system now and then. But, if the practice is as commonplace as the Chronicle piece makes it out to be, then someone is not doing their job. This is not even a question of what the penalties should be for students who are caught cheating \u2014 those penalties should of course be steep \u2014 but a question of why more of these students don\u2019t get caught in the first place.<\/p>\n

The second thing is admittedly a bit more selfish\u2026 It bothers us is that such services cause the whole industry of admissions consultants and coaches to get painted with the same broad brush. As mentioned in the Bloomberg Businessweek article, Veritas Prep is a member of AIGAC, an international organization devoted to upholding ethical standards among admissions consultants. Being admitted to AIGAC is no small task \u2014 a company and its individual members have to jump through many hoops to be admitted \u2014 and maintaining one\u2019s membership is just as involved.<\/p>\n

Although AIGAC now has dozens of members around the world, it takes just one or two bad actors (like the ones profiled in these articles) to cause some university official to go off half-cocked and ban any type of application assistance, no matter what the circumstances. As a company that provides ethical<\/em> admissions consulting<\/a> and essay editing<\/a> services to hundreds of applicants every year, we\u2019d hate to see that happen.<\/p>\n

Ready to sign up for a GMAT course? Enroll through GMAT Club and save up to $180 (use discount code GMATC10)!\u00a0 Take a look at our course options in some of our most popular cities: New York<\/a>, Chicago <\/a>and Los Angeles. <\/a> And make sure to subscribe to our blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece written by an anonymous \u201chired gun\u201d who writes admissions essays, term papers, and even doctoral theses for paying students, who in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5670,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5667\/revisions\/5670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}