| TL;DR: Do less automated work, and call it a "coaching service". ---- I think the challenge here is that the student is NOT writing the essay. Or at least that's the way it looks to me. Your thesis holds if the intent of the essay is simply to communicate information. With that viewpoint, asking a set of dynamic questions is a great solution. It's the automated equivalent to having a journalist interview the candidate, and prepare an initial draft. However, I suspect that for many universities, the meta-intent of the essay is to judge not only information, but also the ability to communicate that information. If a university offers a scholarship to a high-level student, who does potentially groundbreaking research but is unable to communicate the findings, that can still be considered a "failure". Your software will not be there to ask dynamic questions and write the research paper. If you want to continue to offer the service, but you want to retain the ethical high-ground, I can think of two possible options: 1) Disclose to the university that the essay was written with significant help. This may impact your candidate's chances. However, it allows universities to self-sort based on the desire for raw information and accomplishments or communication skills. 2) Provide the same service, but make the output VERY VERY rough. In this sense, the essay builder becomes more of a writing coaching service. This would allow you to overcome barriers of self-modesty and grammar, but would force the candidate to do more work. From your various posts, it sounds to me like option #2 represents the goal of your product, and is your true desire. However, reading between the lines, I also get the impression that you're going rather far beyond that point. It seems like (?) you may be doing more work than you'd like to admit and are trying to cover that fact. I could be wrong here though. |