Is Ghostwriting Unethical?

Technically? Yaaaaas.

If a university catches your application riding shotgun with a ghostwriter, brace for impact: rescinded offers, reputational implosion, the whole “I’ve made a huge mistake” Michael Bluth energy.

But let’s not pretend we’re shocked.

Authors hire ghostwriters.

Politicians outsource speeches to people who own more than one suit.

Beyoncé’s backup singers could solo as divas but get labeled “session musicians.”

Nobody cries “scandal!” They call it just another Tuesday on planet Earth.

In Korea, where academic competition makes Squid Game look like a friendly round of Among Us, every student’s got a hype squad. “Essay coaching” is the euphemism that houses “wise Gandalf-style guidance” to “I will literally sell you my soul for a Stanford acceptance.”

A tale of two valedictorians:

Two students, both top of their class, DIY’d their applications like the overachievers they were. They both got rejected by all eight Ivies. Meanwhile, their B-tier classmates got into the top 20 without a sweat. Why? Those kids had adulting help—not just essay polish, but a crash course in gaming the system.

Valedictorian #1: Condemned like a fallen angel to Georgia Tech, now fueled by dreams of revenge and a 3nm chip of spite on his shoulder.

Valedictorian #2: Took a gap year to “find themselves” rather than face the horror of… UCLA. The shame! A state school!

Here’s your guilt antidote:

Teachers and counselors also outsource! I’ve ghostwritten recommendation letters for university professors who, like an absentee parent, didn’t know a thing about their students. I’ve even written all the recommendations for a senior class whose college counselor had a meltdown during application season.

We all rationalize our moral compromises. But let’s stop acting like college admissions is a meritocracy and not a lightly regulated dumpster fire.

Everyone cheats to a certain degree, and if you play by the rules during the college admissions process, you are putting yourself at a severe disadvantage. You can’t beat the Kobayashi Maru if you don’t rewrite the simulation.

That’s not cheating.

That’s knowing the rules well enough to bend them. Beam that application up, Scotty.