Well, not really.
If you were to send your essays over for a little reviewsio by the ‘Snark, you should not expect to get a grammarly-perfect and perfectly-proofread essay back.
We don’t edit essays. Shucks, we won’t even write ’em for ya. Apparently there are all sorts of services out there that will do this. We’ve even seen companies that will write someone’s dissertation for them. (Really?? sheesh. This world is muffed up.)
We don’t do that stuff.
Our job in reviewing your work is still very editorial — in that we’re looking at things from the perspective of the all-important person: your reader. Your job in writing your essay is to COMMUNICATE CLEARLY. Our job in evaluating your essay is not only to check that you’re communicating the RIGHT things (in order to have a real chance at getting into the school you’re targeting), but we also care about HOW you’re communicating it. We take this part very seriously.
Here’s what an editor at Salon once said about editing:
Good editors work with and not against a writer. They calibrate how aggressively they edit according to how good the writer is, how good the piece is, the type of piece it is, the kind of relationship they have with the writer, how tight the deadline is, and what mood they’re in. But an editor’s primary responsibility is not to the writer but to the reader. He or she must be ruthlessly dedicated to making the piece stronger. Since this is ultimately a subjective judgment, and quite a tricky one, a good editor needs to be as self-confident as a writer. (emphasis added)
That bold part pretty much sums up our MO in working with Brave Supplicants. If we like you (because you’ve been polite, and friendly, and most especially if we see that you already did your homework before sending us any drafts by reading the blahg and using the advice we’ve already offered — and even more so if there’s evidence that you actually tried to incorporate our suggestions into your work when you went through your revisions) and if you didn’t ask for the impossible by sending us your first cruddy drafts two days before the deadline, and if we haven’t morphed into Oscar the Grouch due to too many really bad essays in too short a time, then we’re likely to be more liberal with you in pointing out the issues and mistakes.
But please note that, unlike a regular editor, we do NOT correct your mistakes. In fact, sometimes this would be BAD for you – if your essays are too perfect, and your AWA score is not, then the adcoms will know you got lots of help on the essays. And if your AWA score is perfect then you don’t need our help. Either way, it’s not our job to fix your spelling erros. That’s not what you’re paying us for.
Most of the time, we will comment on the first instance of where you did something goofy or awkward or just plain wrong (subject/verb agreement, missing articles in front of nouns, items in a series that are not parallel are three very common problems in this category). We might comment on it if you do it again. Especially if it’s a writing mistake that seems especially amateur and thus is irritating. You’re a businessperson. You should know better.
But please do not expect EssaySnark to do all the work for you. It would actually be easier on us to do it; going in and fixing someone’s muffed-up writing is way easier and takes way less time than going through the whole process of identifying what the mistake is and writing up a note on it so she can fix it herself. We’d probably breeze through the essays in half the time if we just went ahead and corrected the errors in the drafts.
The point of this whole snarky endeavor is not to tell you what to write, or how to think. Our possibly unrealistic goal with this here project is to help you do learn to do all that for yourself.
That whole teach ’em to fish thing, right? A sisyphean task, perhaps…
PS: If you’re still thinking about getting some help from EssaySnark for Round 1, you’d better get a move on. Those deadlines are peering out at you like monsters on the horizon. They are only going to get bigger and scarier. We’ll be helping you do battle all the way to the last minute but it’s much less stressful – and your results are likely to be much stronger – if you don’t wait that long.
Tell us what you think.