As Penn's admissions officers review applications for the class of 2012, they are finding a handful of essays that seem too polished and mature to have been written by high-school seniors, interim Dean of Admissions Eric Kaplan said.
"There are definitely occasions where the writing seems too good to be true," he said.
An applicant's responses to the two short-answer and two longer essays draw suspicions when they seem to be plagiarized or substantially edited by parents and counselors.
Kaplan said the admissions office becomes suspicious when an essay on the application does not match the other parts of the student's profile, such as English grades, SAT and ACT scores and teacher recommendations.
When an essay raises a red flag, the admissions office will then take measures to investigate its authenticity.
For example, the admissions officers might request that a student provide a graded writing sample. Kaplan did not specify how many times the admissions office has done that this year.
Kaplan added that if the admissions office receives the same essay from multiple applicants, officers may search the Internet to see if they can confirm it was plagiarized. The admissions office may also be more direct in questioning the student in this case.
This has not happened this admissions cycle, Kaplan said, but it has occurred in the past.
Penn's applicants are required to sign a statement asserting that all material in their application is their own.
Other colleges take similar approaches when handling essays that appear to have been written by someone other than the applicant.
At Stanford University, admissions officers may talk to students' guidance counselors or request additional writing samples if there is concern about authorship, according to Shawn Abbott, Stanford's director of admissions.
Essays may be more edited and polished than expected because more students are using private college counselors, who may inject their own writing style into their clients' essays. However, Kaplan said this is not a major problem.
"Students are perhaps getting more coaching on their applications, but I don't think it's become rampant," he said.
College freshman Sydney Fenkell said the private college counselor she used did not make substantial changes to her essays.
"He gave me a better idea of what colleges were looking for, but he definitely did not over-edit my essays," she said.
Steven Goodman, a private college consultant based in Washington, D.C., said counselors generally will not rewrite students' essays significantly.
"When you lose a student's voice, you hurt their chances at admission," he said. "You don't want everyone under the sun to edit something."
Kaplan also said applicants can be hurt by over-editing.
"We're trying to find out who the student is," he said. "The bottom line is that we want authenticity."
