Thanks for the great post on college applications!

However, it is not bad at all for the parents to read their kid's essays and give some reasonable suggestions on how to improve. Of course, the kid should trust his/her parents on their judgement. I read several versions of my daughter's essay in the common application: the first time I told her I could score her essay only 6 (out of 10 points scale) and asked her to send her essay to her teachers and best friends to read and get feedbacks from them. One of her best friends gave her the most detailed comments and excellent ideas on how to improve it (mainly how to be more specific on each topic and provide enough interesting details to support the arguments). One week later my daughter gave me her second version and this time I told her I could score her essay 8 points.After that she continued to ask for comments and suggestions from her teachers and friends, and finally the last version (one week before the deadline for submitting her applications) was scored 9 points by me. I thought her essay would be good enough for any colleges. During the essay writing process, I bought a book titled "50 Successful Harvard Application Essays" for my daughter. I asked my daughter to compare her essay with some essays in the book so that she knew how bad or good her essay in different versions was. I would suggest this book to students who are going to write essays for college applications.