Is it legal to buy admission essays online?

Students use online writing services frequently these days, due the increasing responsibilities young people have to be independent and the incredible workloads imposed upon them by colleges and the need to work (often full time) during school. There’s also the issue of adults who are going back to school and must balance a full time career against a school schedule. In any case, they have come to depend heavily upon these services, which often causes them to ask the question, “Is this legal?”

Legality

In terms of the actual law, yes, there’s nothing illegal about purchasing an academic essay. After all, every time someone purchases a magazine subscription, a book, or an academic journal, they’re buying writing. When these publications pay authors for writing these things to begin with, they’re buying their services in much the same way that a student is buying the services of an academic writer in order to have an essay completed for admission. The question of legality and admission essays comes into effect only if the information in the essay itself is untrue. Because the admission essay constitutes parts of an application, and the application is the basis of a contract which could be drawn up for the student’s entrance into the program, all of the information in the admission essay should be true to the best of the student’s knowledge. This of course has nothing to do with who wrote the essay.

Policy

Of course, school policies are not necessarily parallel to the law. The school policy likely doesn’t allow for someone else to write the essay. However, so long as the essay is one hundred percent custom written from scratch and has never been published anywhere else, either in print, or online, there’s really no need for a student to be concerned that they might be accused of plagiarism. That’s the most important thing. And even if the school might suspect it, they will do nothing without proof, and without the essay having been published elsewhere in the past, there is no risk of there being any type of proof.

Other Options

If a student doesn’t feel comfortable doing something outside of the policy of the school, they can also buy an essay and then use it as an example by rewriting the essay themselves. Or, they can write their own essay and then have it rewritten by a professional writer.