Welcome.

Okay new idea. Something that I had already discussed a little with Sundheep and Ash (cause we met on the train!)

We could have a portal for our school where people applying to universities can get people's opinion on their essays. This might save our college counsellors some work. There are really a few ways to do it, but all have to consider how sensitive people are in opening up to others about their essays, and plagarism. Two ways I thought of:

1) Do it peer to peer, within the level

Advantages: People might know you better, evaluate your essay better. Times might have changed, so getting someone who is in the know now can help.

Disadvantages: Obvious conflict of interests, people can actually use the site to "source for ideas" to use in their own essays. But then again, we are not really competing within our school are we (after all we only have 200 odd students per cohort). We are competing more with the other JCs in Singapore. That is unless, universities like to compare people with similar credentials.

2) Do it as an alumni thing

Advantages: more experienced perhaps? Less conflict of interests

Disadavantages: Don't really know who you are, opinions are not as personalised.

I personally prefer it as an alumni thing. It would give us something meaningful to do as alumni. But in terms of effectiveness, I am really not so sure. The bigger worry is if our alumni wants to do this at all!

Of course, there are much more details and planning that needs to go into this in order to make it work. I was considering some sort of semi-anonymity system. Am I right to think that people don't really care about remaining anonymous if you are evaluating the essay, but they do care if their essays are the ones being evaluated?