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This is partly an answer to the question itself, and in part an answer to Mr. Muth. I would like to consider it a conversation as well as an answer.In the matter of writing essays for international students, I've had three students -- two Korean, six or eight years apart -- and one Russian -- who were furious that I did NOT write their essays for them. One wrote angrily, "All you have given me back are the words that I wrote you, with some fixings!" And I had known we were having a miscommunication from the beginning and so had a local bilingual client explain my services to him before we signed a contract. So I must agree that international students seem to expect a clean, pretty essay, even though I explain to them that if it's too grammatically perfect, no one will believe it.So if I were suggesting one way to select better Chinese clients, it would be to put a lot of emphasis on the essay, and to select based on consistent imperfection. It would also help if there were some way to change essay topics more or less randomly from a pool of questions, or to list things that may not form the answer: "You may not start with a quote. You may not discuss Tienanmen Square. You may not describe your village..." I give U.S. citizens this same advice simply to avoid the drearily repetitive "My great-grandparents were born into slavery.'' "My grandfather got off the boat from Palermo with 22 cents and an address written on a piece of paper," etc. To each family, the immigration story is at least precious, if not sacred. To the admissions officer, it's a yawn.No TranscriptsI cannot comment on the Chinese transcript issue because all international transcripts for law school used to go through WES; now LSAC has some way of handling them directly. They are reported in outcome grids as "No GPA."However, one time in college and once in law school I had professors who wanted to give out all A's, in the theory that education was for the student, not for an outside arbiter. Both were forced by the administrator to give a few B's and one C. My biology teacher who announced on the first day of class that there would be 80% A's and 20% B's, and the only way you could go lower was by missing an exam, did get away with that. (St. John's in Annapolis and Santa Fe had the same problem, and when I took my niece to visit the school, we were told that the professors did in fact give grades now, but not to the students.)When I was in college in the early 1970s, the issue of grade inflation in the U.S. was hotly debated. Harvard had just changed its mandatory curve to about a 3.4, expressly stating that if you were at Harvard, it was utterly unfair to give you lower grades that would then be compared to those of a lesser school. Columbia and Penn quickly followed suit -- how dare anyone think they were less than Harvard? -- and so the dominoes fell over a decade. In the 1990s the same thing happened to law schools. Curves rose from a 2.75 when I started to a 3.1 when I graduated, and now pretty much the whole top 25 or 30 curve to a 3.4 median.So while the issue may be more extreme or more inscrutable (if you'll pardon) in China, it is hardly exclusive to them. For advice, I'd use the same rules the U.S. Law schools use:If you're looking to boost your rankings just use the best number you're given.If you're looking to evaluate the transcript, find a teacher of ethnic studies or otherwise fortuitously from that country and ask for a meaningful understanding. If at all possible, get two, to balance rivalries. (Thus, I never asked Boston College and Boston U. about each other; I asked the now-retired admissions officers at Cornell and George Washington about both.)As to the senior year SAT, resume, and interview prep, I can name a dozen colleges that do the same, and a dozen law schools with mandatory "Senior Seminar" (resume and interview) plus mandatory Bar Prep courses.Fair AssessmentsMr. Muth, I believe you're quoting Terry Crawford when you say, "Are we being fair to individual students or are we making assumptions about groups and schools and letting that affect our decisions?" I frequently ask that about law schools.Back in the 1980s, I had as a client a young man from a blue-collar family who'd joined the military, then used his GI Bill to pay for college. Penn and Temple were both big-city schools to this Pennsylvania equivalent of John-Boy Walton, and Temple was within his veterans' budget. He ended up with a 3.99 GPA (with no weighted A+ grades given) and above a 95th percentile on the LSAT. He was summarily rejected by Harvard, almost certainly because he went to Temple. (No terrible loss; he was admitted to NYU and Georgetown, but still a disappointing first response.)Law schools respond by saying they can't interview every applicant, and that's why their admissions fees are about 1/3 of what medical and MBA programs charge. But without that interview, are you evaluating my student Glenn or Temple U.?So if I were a U.S. college with a high volume of Chinese applicants, I'd hire a bunch of grads from Middlebury College, the Defense Language Institute, or some other school known to have an excellent program in Chinese language and culture but not itself a school where many Chinese applied (to avoid conflict of interests). I'd send them to the major cities with prep schools or other way of channeling students into the U.S. educational system, and require a videotaped interview, with face, clock and thumbprint, much as videotaped depositions must be in order to be admissible in court. The interviewers themselves must not be Chinese, again to avoid conflicts. The interviewer can give an opinion when the interviewee leaves. But more importantly, once the word got out that photo and thumbprint certified the interviews, there would have to be fewer cheaters, until the scammers, like hackers, found a way to up the ante. (I clicked on one of your links and was pleased to see that there is such a program in use by some colleges.)RecommendationsI agree that there's nothing fraudulent in the student's writing a letter for the professor to sign. I often recommend it to my students getting letters from "unusual" departments -- Drama, e.g. I do encourage them to use a "fill in the blanks" method: "Of the hundreds of students I've taught in the last ten years, K'Sandra is one ot the top [#]." In fact, LSAC has now added a "check box" of "Evaluations" which is different from a recommendation, in that the author need only check "top 2%, top 5%," etc. and may optionally add text.For non-English speakers in general, I know that language limitations can result in less-than-glowing English writting. For that reason I recommend that the author write freely in the native tongue and that a certified translation be attached.AgentsThe problem of "agents' has haunted me throughout my career. Because I never "worked" within the confines of any admissions regulations, and because I am not constrained by the Freedom of Information Act on one side or the code of client confidentiality on the other, people perceive me as unethical.In July of 2008 or earlier (the earliest date I can find on the file), a colleague quit law school admissions and started an organization that was indeed confusing. It was not at all clear whether it was a for-profit or non-profit, whether the student paid or not, whether the former admissions officer was drawing a salary. And it wasn't at all clear whether the person was deliberately obfuscating or just not sure what he was founding.Someone on the prelaw board then run by Elon College wrote, "those services are all frauds, and don't to anything that we don't every day. I blew a gasket and wrote a very politically insensitive but accurate answer.. Here it is:NO. When was the last time you helped a young man buy his first suit? When have you stopped to give an hour or two of LSAT tutoring to a student whose score is severely limiting his or her law school opportunities? Have you ever had to help a student figure out what to do when his heroin - addicted father returns home after a five-year binge? Or how to fill out the financial aid forms for a man with two perfectly legitimate wives acquired through African tribal marriages? And how often do you advance money for seat deposits, moving expenses, or textbooks until the student's financial aid check arrives?Every year, I choose 30 clients from among the hundred or more people who call me. Most of them have problems in their past, but I see their potential to succeed. Each of these clients gets 30 to 40 hours of attention — about a week of my life. In two of the last three years, 100% of my clients have been admitted to law school.All law schools are not the same. Part of my success lies in finding the right one for each client. I also know that all prelaw advisors are not the same. At [commenter's school], you probably have adequate resources for dealing with the 200 or so students each year who apply to law school; when I lived in North Carolina, the single prelaw advisor at NC Central was also the chair of the political science department and the assistant football coach. And all admissions consultants are not the same. I suggest that if you want to know what [former admissions officer] does for his clients and whether it's worth what he charges, you call him and ask him. And if you want to know what I do for my clients, feel free to call me as well.I HATE THE WORD "THEY"! I know we can't talk to every applicant or college. I know that, even though I've visited 130 or more law schools, many of them don't look like the school I visited in 1989. But surely some effort can be made to figure out who's trustworthy and who isn't. Some schools have learned I was accurate in my description of my clients very quickly; some took a decade to form an opinion. But for the schools where my opinion is meaningful, I pick up the phone. [Fortunately, I have a pretty good assessment of where that is, simply by who'll take the phone call.]I don't know how colleges can assess. Perhaps they need a chat board for Chinese clients; "Does anyone have a "To err is Human, to Forgive divine" essay?"