I AM A CO-FOUNDER of Acceptional, which runs The Essay Exchange, and wanted to respond to Assoc. College Dean Maurie McInnis and the recent article in The Cavalier Daily titled "Website solicits students" (March 17). Although I respect the opinions Dean McInnis has conveyed, I wanted to share Acceptional's opinions on plagiarism and the economic inequality that exists in admissions to top schools.
We absolutely agree with Dean McInnis's view on plagiarism. This is why we take steps to proactively fight plagiarism. We do this by sharing essays with Turnitin.com, the web's leading anti-plagiarism fighter, by providing essays in a way that makes it impossible to copy and paste them, by making all users sign the same plagiarism agreement that all University applicants sign and by offering our database and cooperation to admissions offices. In fact, we sent Dean of Admissions Greg Roberts an e-mail on August 2, 2010 about our service and offered to share our essay database so that the University's Office of Admissions could check 2011 applications for plagiarism. This e-mail was not returned.
Secondly, Dean McInnis does not address the positive mission of Acceptional: to level the economic playing field in admissions. Today, the admissions process is heavily skewed toward wealthy applicants' advantage. The national ratio of students to school guidance counselors is 350-to-1. To make up for this, tens of thousands of applicants pay an average of $3,700 for private college counselors and go to expensive private high schools with robust college counseling services.
Students who cannot afford these advantages suffer in the admissions process. Acceptional addresses this disparity with The Essay Exchange and is creating other services that will provide excellent options for applicants to receive affordable, personal college admissions guidance that all too often they cannot receive elsewhere or afford. At a minimum, The Essay Exchange provides students with a benchmark of how strong an essay needs to be in order to get into the school of their choice - something many students at poorly funded high schools lack.
Admissions is a big business and one that is especially lucrative for private admissions counselors, many of whom are former college admissions counselors themselves. This includes the former assistant dean of admissions at the University, Thomas Phillips, who works as a private admissions consultant with Veritas Prep. Would Dean McInnis send an e-mail to the student body condemning the use of her former colleagues?
I would welcome a discussion with Dean McInnis about the role of wealth in admissions and how we could work with the University to increase meritocracy in the admissions process. I also would like to encourage the dean to thoughtfully analyze the role that admissions offices play in continuing the inequities in the admissions process instead of criticizing the organizations that are trying to address and change these inequities.
We are also very interested in what students think and want to continue the broader conversation about inequality in college admissions today and what we can do about it. We welcome students to visit our Facebook page facebook.com/acceptional or tweet your comments and thoughts to @essayxchange.
Rory O'Connor is a co-founder of Acceptional. He graduated from Amherst College in 2009.
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