Taylor focused more on creativity than perfection. He read a few successful essays to get an idea what admissions officers would like. He chose not to hire a professional to edit his piece, as a classmate at Ryle High School had done.

        “I would see that as cheating,” Taylor told me.

        He would be right.

Overly ambitious

        With more students than ever applying to college, the admissions process at the more selective schools has prompted a frenzy of resume-padding, grade-obsessing and essay-faking.

        Ambitious students strategize about everything. They try to divine when mediocre classmates will be taking the SAT, because if they take it then, their own scores might look better.

        They're determined to appear well-rounded. Heaven forbid that a high-schooler should develop a passion; better to dabble in theater, chess, football and physics, while making sure to lead a Girl Scout troop and read books to the blind.

        Entrepreneurs are only too happy to capitalize on the panic. Thousands of application essays are for sale over the Internet, with some Web sites also offering editing services.

        “This year alone, tens of thousands of applicants will have EssayEdge ensure that their essay is structurally flawless, captivating, and stylistically perfect,” says one such site, EssayEdge.com.

        Pity the poor admissions officer who has to plow through all this perfection. It must be like judging a beauty contest among 5-year-olds — you know there's a real child under there, if you could only get past the makeup, the poofy dress and the odor of their parents' desperation.

        Fortunately, an elegant and simple solution is on the horizon.

Smart answer

        The College Board, purveyor of the SAT, has announced revisions to take effect in 2005. Among them is a new writing requirement; students will get 20 to 30 minutes to craft an essay in response to a question.

        These pieces will be scored by trained readers searching for standard criteria. The essays also will be posted on a Web site accessible to colleges.

        This is smart. If admissions officers have any doubts — perhaps a student's application essay is too perfect compared to his English grades — they can check another piece of writing guaranteed to be the student's own.

        Taylor Mackintosh, who ultimately decided to attend Xavier University, is all for it. So is Nathan Pinney, another Ryle graduate. He recently got a scholarship to the University of Kentucky based in part on his essay. He tried to showcase his personality, he says, not his ownership of a thesaurus.

        The new system will have its drawbacks. Web sites will start offering the formula for a perfect, 30-minute essay, and privileged students will again have an edge.

        But at least they won't be quite so free to fake it. Eventually, that game catches up to students. Better sooner than later.
       E-mail ksamples@enquirer.com or call (859) 578-5584.

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