Students take term papers to writing centers. Researchers revise one another’s articles. Academic life relies on such exchanges, yet demands original work. So how much help is too much?
Last month one authority set a strict new standard. The Rhodes Trust, which awards coveted scholarships to the University of Oxford, announced that in writing application essays, students from the United States cannot get any help at all.
Rhodes candidates have long had to certify that the essays were their own work. But the 1,000-word personal statements had become, readers said, suspiciously slick. Generic. Predictable.
“We are no longer confident that the essays reflect the writing ability and style of the applicants, nor, even more important, that they reflect accurately applicants’ true personal goals, values and aspirations,” Elliot F. Gerson, American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, wrote in a letter to colleges. Under the new policy, students and the institutions that nominate them must attest that no draft has been edited or reviewed.
The move has roiled the growing ranks of fellowship advisers, who disavow any meddling but don’t think students should write their applications alone. “It’s just not the way the real world works. It’s not the way the academic world works,” says Anthony B. Cashman III, director of the Office of Distinguished Fellowships and Graduate Studies at College of the Holy Cross. Feedback, advisers argue, is central to writing and learning.
But what feedback entails is a matter of judgment. The higher the stakes, perhaps, the more tempting it is to push the limits of fairness. The debate over an ultracompetitive selection process shows the difficulty of defining those limits.
In reading a student’s essay, or anybody else’s, posing a question for clarity seems acceptable; inserting a paragraph, probably not. But along that continuum, try drawing a bright line.
Fellowship advisers, some under pressure from presidents to produce winners, serve as scouts and mentors. They might point students to research opportunities or service projects, conduct mock interviews, and—yes—critique application essays. But the stated mission is to promote students’ potential, not to package them.
The National Association of Fellowships Advisors, with 400 institutional members, follows a precise code of ethics. “All application materials,” it says, “shall be the sole and original work of the applicant.”
To one adviser, that means not proposing any language in a student’s essay, instead circling phrases and jotting down in the margin “awkward” or “unclear.” Another, in Microsoft Word, inserts comments but won’t turn on “track changes.” More than anything, advisers aim to draw students out.
Rhodes representatives, respectful of general guidance, worried about revision. Seeing increasingly polished essays from American applicants, says Mr. Gerson, made readers wonder what students’ “own work” even meant. One recent winner mentioned 22 rounds of edits.
A strong stand was necessary, the program decided, to preserve the integrity of the competition.
Selection vs. Education
Grade inflation and résumé burnishing already complicate the task of assessing applicants fairly, says Mr. Gerson. Rhodes nominees typically number 900, and to choose finalists, about 200, essays are important, he says. They ought to be windows into the actual candidates.
From advisers’ perspective, however, selection isn’t the chief concern. With only 32 winners, any applicant’s odds are slim. So to justify students’ investment of time and energy, advisers consider the competition an educational experience.
Heavy editing provides no benefit, says Doug Cutchins, an assistant dean and director of postgraduate transitions at Grinnell College. He strives to help all applicants figure out who they are and where they’re going. On his desk sits a mug one student made for him in art class, bearing his constant refrain: “It’s got to be about the process.”
Mr. Cutchins, who helped lead an ethics session at last year’s meeting of fellowship advisers, defends the role of a conscientious mentor in that process. “Any of us gain more,” he says, “when we’re not just talking to ourselves in an echo chamber.”
Applying for a scholarship can expose students to more intensive advising and writing instruction than ever before. “They’re both skill sets that kind of fall through the cracks in most universities,” says Dana C. Kuchem, program manager of the Undergraduate Fellowship Office at Ohio State University.
Two months into an application, she says, a student who had planned to be a doctor his whole life might discover that he wants to be an advocate for the disabled. When she reads personal statements, Ms. Kuchem tries to prompt such reflection. No suggestions, she says, only questions—for students to answer themselves.
Jessica Hanzlik, a physics major, went to Ohio State’s fellowship office several years ago focused on gender equity in the hard sciences. As she applied for the Rhodes, Ms. Kuchem pushed her to delve deeper into what achieving that equity would take. “It really forced me to refine my thinking,” Ms. Hanzlik says, “about what I wanted to accomplish.”
She’d intended to become a physics professor but, through discussions and drafts, gravitated toward policy. She won the scholarship, in 2008, and earned master’s degrees in particle physics and comparative social policy at Oxford.
Afterward, Ms. Hanzlik joined Teach for America, and she is still at a charter school in southwest Chicago, teaching eighth grade. The ideas she developed as a scholarship applicant, she says, led her to a point in the pipeline “three steps before” gender equity in the hard sciences.
Risks to Authenticity
Any application process, though, carries risks. Suzanne McCray, the advising association’s unofficial ethicist, sees that in her day job, as dean of admissions at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
“We suffer the same questions that the Rhodes is,” she says. “We wonder, did the student write this essay? Or is the student getting too much help?”
Occasionally, says Ms. McCray, essays for admission or a scholarship at the university ring false. But readers are resigned to that—and make decisions accordingly. “The overall educational merit of the process,” she says, “is greater than the problems associated with a few who abuse it.”
Rhodes officials have implied that such abuse is a uniquely American problem. “In most of the 29 other countries we elect scholars in, applicants submit the kind of straightforward personal statements that you would expect from young people,” Charles Conn, warden of Rhodes House, wrote to fellowship advisers in the United States.
Despite their good work, the program seems to suggest, dedicated advisers, uncommon elsewhere, are probably to blame.
Debra Brown Young, an associate dean in the University of Mississippi’s honors college, tends to agree. One of the few advisers publicly supporting the new policy, she thinks the growth of the profession has left applications altered. “My presence,” she says, “necessarily shaped what a student was able to think and do.”
Some might say that favorably about advising of any kind. But with a new policy in place, fellowship advisers want to respect it. They’re just not sure how. Is discussing ideas OK, before a student writes her essay? May an adviser read it if he withholds any comment? What if a student wants to borrow text from his other scholarship application, which was already revised? The president and vice president of the advising group are traveling to Washington this month to put such questions to Mr. Gerson.
“We all agree with the Rhodes that we want students to do their own work,” says Ms. Kuchem, of Ohio State, who is vice president of the group. Although a gray area won’t become black and white, the profession is seeking more clarity.
From this year’s applicants, Mr. Gerson expects to see “refreshingly individual and highly varied personal statements.” He anticipates fewer surprises at the interview stage, when a finalist with such a strong voice on paper can sound nothing like that in person.
But some advisers aren’t so sure Rhodes officials will get the original essays they’re after. Candidates for the scholarship, most likely lifelong overachievers, have already written many personal statements, and society has shaped the genre in their minds, says Joanne Brzinski, senior associate dean for undergraduate education at Emory University. First drafts are often formulaic and clichéd, she says, citing “the study-abroad essay” about a “life-changing experience” in another culture.
Her role is to break students’ bad habits. “I see us as advisers fighting against the formula,” Ms. Brzinski says. “What we’re trying to do is to get their voices to come through.”
A lack of individualized attention could send students to Google. Many colleges post advice or sample essays: Pennsylvania State and Stanford Universities, Swarthmore College, the University of New Mexico. The University of Michigan’s examples generally start with a story and end with a case for the applicant’s place at Oxford.
For hopeful students, seeking help of some kind could be inevitable. Without an adviser’s input, some applications might sound fresher, others staler. Maybe a personal statement can get only so personal.
Pledges of ‘No Editorial Review’
Under a new policy, American candidates for the Rhodes Scholarship, and the institutions that nominate them, must attest that no draft of the application essay has been edited or reviewed.
Statement for applicants: “I attest that this essay is my own work and is wholly truthful. Neither it nor any earlier draft has been edited by anyone other than me, nor has anyone else reviewed it to provide me with suggestions to improve it. I understand that any such editing or review would disqualify my application.”
Statement for institutions: “I am knowledgeable regarding the institutional practices of [name of institution] in connection with applications for the Rhodes Scholarship. To the best of my knowledge and belief, [name of institution] has provided no editorial review of the applicant’s [or applicant’s name] essay.”