The Main Chance

Some would probably say it's just a fact of life. Man is a competitive beast who will seize any opportunity to get ahead.

The recent Long Island SAT cheating scheme and the Adam Wheeler incident certainly don't do much to contradict that perspective. We've entered an era where passing off others' work as your own is becoming easier and more prevalent than ever. (I've decided that the bards of yore ripping off their rivals' poetry doesn't count.) Blame technology or apathy or Wikipedia or No Child Left Behind or the corporatization of education or whatever bugbear suits you this week.

A lot has been written--and a lot of polls have been taken--on plagiarism, slipping standards, and academic fraud. I've offered some of my own views in the past, on those first two issues; now I'm going to tackle that remaining one. Instead of yammering on about the Unfortunate State of Society, as I think 94% of the Internet is already devoted to such rants, I'll just describe my own brush with scholastic flimflam.

Here's the set-up. Like many of my peers, I supplement my income by tutoring. Mainly high-schoolers, since I live in a hyper-competitive region for college applications, but also the odd university senior who wants help with the GREs. Parents are usually charmed by my credentials and courteous demeanor; my students are generally soft-spoken and compliant. It's decent money for easy work.

But there's always an exception. A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a masters' student from my own institution who wanted me to write her Ph.D. applications. This young woman--with whom I've never had any contact whatsoever--sent me an email listing the application requirements, along with a brief summary of her career plans. The sign-off line was, and I quote, "'Please let me know if you are willing to write a Personal [sic] statement for me."

This seriously pissed me off.

I know how hard it is to get into grad school, and how intimidating a process it can be. It's a high-stakes enterprise, subject to others' arbitrary whims, and so the few things an applicant can control assume exaggerated emotional importance. It's not like I don't understand the pressure she's feeling.

But goddamnit. I worked my ass off senior year. November and December 2006 were, without a doubt, the most stressful months of my life. I basically lived off of falafel, Tylenol, and the kind of hipster-drip-coffee that's omnipresent in the East Village. After graduation, I slept fifteen hours a day for three weeks just to make up the deficit.

So when I encountered this distressingly blasé request to hoodwink multiple admissions committees, I felt both personally affronted and outraged on behalf of all honest students everywhere.

What's a girl to do? I seriously considered contacting someone in university administration since, as I said, she's enrolled at my own school. She's also in a department where I've taken several classes, and I undoubtedly know some of the professors who'd be writing her recommendation letters. But that had the ring of self-righteous judgment about it, so I chickened out. I wish I hadn't.

Then I thought about threatening to contact them, giving her a chance to repent and Do The Right Thing. She might've bought it: after all, she'd artlessly volunteered her full name, college affiliation, and intentions. Again, I backed off, in the grand tradition of Anglo-Saxon conflict-avoidance.

Ultimately, I responded with a curt, "No, I wouldn't be willing to do that." I never heard from her again, unsurprisingly, and it's likely far too late to take any action now.

There's certainly more I could have done, but I don't think I was morally required to do anything. Yes, there's that Edmund Burke quote about how evil triumphs when good men do nothing... but Burke can seriously STFU, in this case. I expressed my displeasure and decided not to involve myself further. And I don't think I was wrong to do so--even if I wish I'd been a little more proactive, it would've only been for my own satisfaction.

This one underhanded request is surely a tiny drop in a startlingly vast bucket. If I've gotten a single request from this one person, then there could be dozens planning to cheat their way into graduate programs, just at my school alone. Who knows how many more there are in my city, or how many in my field, or how many are sitting near me in the research library where I'm writing this.

I do wonder what will become of my aspiring charlatan. I'm sure I wasn't the only tutor she contacted, and it's absolutely possible that she managed to hire a ghostwriter. Maybe in a few months I'll Google her name and see if she's listed as a Ph.D. candidate anywhere. And if I do, I will revel in my wholly justified anger.

Looking forward to it.