How flexible are the academic requirements for new freelance essay writers?

Quick question about starting out as a freelance writer: I've had a look at several essay writing companies, and many of the UK-based ones insist that new writers have at least a 2:1 degree from a British university. How strict are these requirements, generally speaking? I have a medical degree from a Nigerian university, currently live in the UK, and have done some (unpaid) academic and quasi-academic writing on the side. Do companies actually turn competent new applicants away if their academic qualifications are not up to scratch, or are these criteria merely listed to deter the unsuitable? (as an indication of the level at which one *ought* to be able to perform).

I realise that different companies have different policies and attitudes towards hiring writing "talent", but I was just wondering if, by and large, they take their listed requirements seriously.

Thanks.

This is my opinion only, and others on the forum have far more experience and knowledge, so take it for what it's worth. The requirements are there for show. They want to create an appearance, for clients' sake, that they only hire qualified writers. In reality, at the lesser firms, anything goes. At the better firms, maybe they stick to the stated requirements, maybe not. Anybody who has attended a bachelor's program, even if it was never completed, and could show evidence of decent academic writing, including citing sources, should be a viable candidate. Writers who can do the work but don't have the degree probably just fake it on their resumes, and I'm quite sure the companies never check.

Agreed.

Writers who can do the work but don't have the degree probably just fake it on their resumes, and I'm quite sure the companies never check. It's possible to check work credentials, but it takes a lot of time and resources; sometimes weeks! So I doubt they check (other than when work of such a new writer is in progress or completed).

While this may be true of some companies I make sure my writers provide their degree certs and transcripts, along with 3 pieces of academic writing. I do actually take foreign writers on ocassion but only if their writing is of sufficient quality. I find the easiest way to assess an ESL's writing skills is to look at their informal emails. This is far more reliable as of course they may in fact have paid for their academic essays!

Karen

I don't recall ever having actually been asked for transcripts, just for a list of my degrees and the institutions where I earned them. They also asked for writing samples. In my opinion, it's impossible for any company to really evaluate writers until they actually hire them and see the work they produce. A degree is not necessarily proof that someone genuinely earned it and there's no way to be sure that the furnished writing samples were actually written by the applicant.

More importantly, there's not necessarily any correlation between degrees and writing ability, much less writing ability in any specific area. For example, I have formal degrees in Law, Psychology, and History, but there are (admittedly) plenty of topics in Law and History that I don't handle at all. Conversely, there are even more topics in completely different areas (like Business, Communications, Nursing, Philosophy, Political Science, etc) that I handle routinely (and very well) without having any formal degrees in any of those areas.

If I were running an essay company, I'd just want to verify that applicants really have any degrees listed from the schools where they're supposed to have been issued (mainly to to see whether they're being honest with me), and I'd want to review the first few essays to make sure they're up to company standards. In my opinion, it's unrealistic to expect a company to do much more than that. On the other hand, they should be pretty quick to dump any writer whose work turns out not to be good or that generates legitimate customer complaints; and they should have an absolute zero-tolerance policy toward any sort of plagiarism.

They are not. That information is only to serve as lip service to an otherwise jittery client. The truth is, the company doesn't care about those things. Just produce the paper and submit it. They will take care of any complaints that may come from the client. Just help them complete the con and they will take care of everything else.

Writing companies rarely verify the applicant's academic background because the only effective metric is the writer's output after getting hired!

@TopDogWriter
Reputable UK essay companies will not allow you to write on topics in which you don't have a degree. This makes sense, as a qualification in a subject area demonstrates you have some knowledge and understanding of that particular topic. You cannot be competent to write on a topic which you have not studied to a certain level.

If a freelancer is boasting of writing on topics in which he/she has no qualifications you should be wary. Would you take your car for a service to a landscape gardener?

Writing companies, regardless of location now require the writer to take writing tests, submit their resume, transcript of records and diploma, and submit an on the spot research paper. The requirements are no longer lip service as someone here has implied. These documents are submitted for a reason and the tests results are considered as a part of the application process. The companies prefer that non-UK or US based writers do not apply since they cannot meet the writing standards as the company has promised the students. There are however, some other companies that openly admit to hiring ESL writers (at a lower pay rate than ENL) from any country in the world. I suggest that the OP and anyone else who is ESL but interested in this business look into applying for a writing job at those companies.

If I could only write projects in the areas of my own degrees, I'd only be able to write about US Law, History, and Psychology. Meanwhile, I've written (literally) thousands of Nursing projects, ~200 UK and Euro Law projects, and hundreds of projects in (each of) Marketing, Education, Communications, Philosophy, and many other project areas; and also dozens of projects in Engineering, Aviation, Zoology, etc. In fact, I just took on a 12K-word dissertation in Dentistry, today. To date, I've had more Nursing clients than clients in any other field; and some of them have used me for over a decade, from the time they were undergraduates through their dissertations and even some of their applications and formal correspondence after they completed their studies. I have two different nurses who actually referred their daughters to me, who were children when their mothers first started using my services. Likewise, I have a retired Navy Lieutenant Colonel and an active Navy Captain, both of whom referred their sons to me for academic work in Military Science; and I've never taken a single course in either Nursing or Military Science, let alone holding a degree in either field.

Basically, someone who has the requisite writing skills to do this job well, in the first place, the intellectual ability to synthesize information from sources, and a decade or two of experience writing in a gradually-expanded range of academic areas can handle almost any project at almost any level. That doesn't mean that we know as much about the field as our clients, or that I'm qualified to be a dentist after writing this dissertation; but I can write almost anything that almost any degree program requires of its degree candidates. Obviously, the less knowledge or experience I have in any particular field the more careful I need to be before taking on the project in good conscience and the more I (may) need to rely on my clients to provide me with the source material; but that's about my only limitation as far as writing outside of the areas in which I actually hold a degree. As a client, you just need to be sure that you're dealing with a conscientious and honest writer who knows his limitations and who will not take on any projects if he lacks confidence that he can do them well.

Understand that this is something you only learn to do very gradually. I recently posted in threads revived here by others that illustrate exactly what that means. For one example, in a thread about UK Law projects, there are posts dating back to 2011, when someone who only became a client of mine later described how I flatly declined his UK Law project, precisely because I had not yet had sufficient experience with UK Law to take on his project at that time. In that same thread, I posted my (redacted) email screen showing that I eventually ended up writing that same client's UK and Euro Law projects from 2012 through 2015, and that he contacted me again much more recently about another type of project.

@FreelanceWriter
I would never recommend a student orders an essay from a Jack of all trades master of none, freelance writer.

Most degree courses in UK are 3 years long and no self-respecting UK essay company would allow a writer to attempt an essay outside of their sphere of study. Any writer offering to write on subjects they have not studied to degree level and beyond would be highly susceptible to plagiarism. This is why reputable UK essay writing companies would restrict a writer to completing essays in their graduate or postgraduate subjects.

Possible exceptions might exist if someone had wide experience. So for example a nurse who had practised her profession for many years, ideally passing examinations while demonstrating good writing skills might be allowed to write essays on nursing.

Being a good writer, especially in your own opinion, is not sufficient to compensate for a lack of academic studies. .

High school students and (some) college students might plagiarize accidentally. Nobody who has written (literally) thousands of academic projects for a living for 20 years ever plagiarizes by accident; it would have to be by deliberate choice by someone completely lacking integrity. No writer who declines projects outright if he can't take them in good conscience would ever plagiarize anything, ever.

Allow me to address some of your other logically-flawed arguments in this thread:


First, simply listing the subject areas that one routinely handles (or one's degrees) isn't the same thing as "boasting." Second, that's a ridiculously bad analogy. Landscapers don't necessarily have the skills to do mechanical work on any types of cars. A logical and more fair analogy to someone with a US law degree writing UK law projects (or other projects outside of his own degree areas) might be to suggest that someone who owns a Toyota shouldn't take his car to a certified Mercedes master mechanic who does car repairs as a freelance mechanic, because his formal training is on Mercedes vehicles, not Toyota vehicles. That would, at least, be a sensible analogy to the issue of writers with different types of degrees and what types of writing projects they should or shouldn't be trusted to take on.

Whether or not I'd trust a mechanic whose formal training was on Mercedes vehicles with my Toyota repairs would depend only on whether or not I had confidence that the mechanic in question is honest and could be trusted to know what mechanical projects (on any type of vehicle) he can take on with the expectation of doing high-quality work. So, if there were a forum called "MechanicScam" where a particular Mercedes-trained mechanic had been posting under the same ID as "FreelanceMechanic" for 14 years, and where all of the other legit mechanics (also) posting for a decade or more had repeatedly vouched for him over the years and referred to him as being the best freelance mechanic in the business, and repeatedly posted that they send their clients to him for mechanical fixes beyond their own abilities to handle, then, yes, I think I'd feel quite safe trusting that particular Mercedes-trained mechanic with my Toyota if he indicated that he had high confidence in his ability to do that repair very well.


This is obviously a reference to my earlier point that being a good writer is, in principle, one of the criteria that determine whether or not someone can be trusted to produce high-quality essays on a much wider range of subject areas than his own formal degree areas. However, I'm perfectly comfortable allowing my posts on this forum to demonstrate my basic writing (and reasoning) ability and style and to allow your posts to demonstrate yours.

Actually, I'd like to rephrase that for accuracy: There is exactly one way that an honest writer who is extremely experienced could accidentally plagiarize himself; but it has nothing to do with whether or not someone has a degree in the same field as the project. About 10 years ago, I had a project that I knew I'd seen before. I think it was either about Word War II or Constitutional Law, but I don't remember. When I was done writing it, I searched for and found the essay that I'd written for it the last time, and I was really shocked to see that I'd just written an entire paragraph, strictly off the top of my head, that was nearly word for word what I'd written several years earlier. That was a real eye-opener, because I wouldn't have thought that I could even memorize an entire paragraph and remember it years later like that if I tried, let alone recreate it verbatim without having purposely memorized it.

Obviously, I learned to check for that, ever since, by reviewing my old related projects as part of my proofreading process. I purposely don't look at them while I'm writing the new project, because I don't want to influence my writing subconsciously. When you write these essays full time for years, you do sometimes encounter the exact same essay prompts multiple times -- especially in English, History, Nursing, and Political Science courses -- and a less experienced full time writer, such as I was when this happened around 2012, might not realize it. After the first time you become aware of it, you adjust your processes, precisely to make sure that it never happens again. That's the only way that a trustworthy experienced writer could ever plagiarize something accidentally; and honest writers with decades'-old reputations to protect under a single ID that functions much like their "brand name" would never plagiarize anything deliberately. Either way, relative familiarity with the material or having a degree in the field plays no role whatsoever, regardless of whether it was deliberate plagiarism or accidental (self-)plagiarism.

@FreelanceWriter
".........US Law, History, and Psychology. Meanwhile, I've written (literally) thousands of Nursing projects, ~200 UK and Euro Law projects, and hundreds of projects in (each of) Marketing, Education, Communications, Philosophy, and many other project areas; and also dozens of projects in Engineering, Aviation, Zoology, etc. In fact, I just took on a 12K-word dissertation in Dentistry, today".

Students can make up their own mind whether they want to use a writer who announces he can write on just about every topic going. Making unsubstantiated claims is easy and we can all do that on this and other forums.

Your so-called logic misses the point entirely. My analogy is perfectly reasonable.
Writing in an area in which you have no qualification or experience is akin to my reference to a car mechanic and landscape gardener. Your attempt to justify a Jack of all trades and master of none is without merit. The art of writing is important but more crucial is a knowledge and understanding of the topic. If you are not familiar with the subject and not studied it in depth you should not be writing essays.

Your Mercedes versus Toyota analogy is relevant if a writer has a history Degree and chooses to write a history dissertation at Master's level. Although the writer does not have the depth of knowledge required for Master's level, he/she at least has the foundation of relevant knowledge in the subject area. Consider it hill walking at graduate level progressing to mountaineering at Master's level.

Legitimate UK essay companies would rightly restrict you to writing on US Law, History and Psychology.
So students reading this and other posts can decide whether they want to risk using a USA based writer who appears able to write on any topic or a UK one who writes on the topic in which they have a qualification.

Apparently, enough of them already have, according to a UK-educated and UK-based writer who doesn't think very highly of US-educated and US-based writers, generally:


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/best-writer-2947/#msg85941

Just the one endorsement.
If UK essay companies restrict their writers to subjects in which they have gained a degree (usually 2.1 minimum) they have their legitimate reasons for doing so.

For the benefit of (other) readers, I'm going to explain why this latest mantra that writers cannot be trusted to write excellent projects unless they actually hold a degree in the field of every project they write is patently ridiculous:

College students typically receive a degree in one and only one academic field. However, over the course of four years, every college student must write dozens of academic essays in many other fields in which they take elective course, all of which are fields in which they do not receive degrees, themselves. Biology majors write history and political science and economic essays, history majors write biology, philosophy, and psychology essays, and engineering majors write sociology, ethics, and accounting essays, etc. Someone who has the talent and ability to write academic essays for a living in the first place and who has written (literally)10,000+ academic papers over 20+ years can write a much better academic essay in every one of those fields than 99% of college students currently enrolled in undergraduate courses in all of those academic areas.

Just consider some typical philosophy assignments about Platos' Allegory of The Cave or about Kantian Deontological Ethics, or history assignments about the causes of WWII or about the Bolshevik Revolution, or sociology assignments about Structural Functionalism or comparing Merton's and Durkheim's theories, etc. Does anybody really think that the typical good college student taking any of those classes can write a better essay on any of those topics on his first attempt to write that essay than someone like me, who, in addition to having already taken all of those same courses as a student, has since written each of those essays dozens of times? Those examples are just a very tiny fraction of all of the different subjects and topics that I've written about many, many times; and, since roughly 2007, every project that I write is submitted to turnitin or other plagiarism scanners, which means I'm also an expert at writing about the same topics in unique and original ways many different times. On quite a few occasions, I've handled two of the exact same assignments in the same class and with the same deadline for classmates, when one of them ordered for both of them, and with no issues. At one point, I had three nursing students all enrolled in the same degree program at the same time, with each of them needing weekly forum posts and responses, many full-length essays, and a major dissertation-type of writing project at the end of the program.

Does that necessarily mean that I can write any project on any subject or topic, regardless of the level? Of course not. I've written (literally) hundreds of theses and dozens of dissertations in fields outside of my own degree areas; and some of those clients have left reviews for me on this forum thanking me effusively for my work. That doesn't mean that I can write a dissertation in Economics, just because I can handle just about any lower-level undergraduate economics project. On the other hand, when clients have been able to furnish me with all of the necessary source material, I've had no problem writing (good) dissertations in fields such as vocal training for singers, art history, and advanced AI and machine learning. On all of those occasions, I made very clear, in advance, that I had no prior experience in those fields and that while I can (always) guarantee the quality and originality of my writing, the substantive quality of the project depended entirely on the quality and sufficiency of the source material provided by the client.


Actually, it wasn't an "endorsement" at all; it was much better and more objective than a mere "endorsement," because the person who left that comment was a British writer who, essentially, trashed all American writers here, in general, but admitted that he'd already heard of my reputation in the UK and that he respected me based on what he'd heard about my work.

@FreelanceWriter

Fortunately for the reputation of the UK essay writing industry most students reading this site can recognise a hack from a professional essay writer who writes according to the qualifications they hold.

Finally, we're in complete agreement about at least one thing.

@FreelanceWriter

I put a hack in same category as 'jack of all trades' writer.

As a proud hack, I can readily testify that all good writers in this industry routinely write projects in dozens of subject areas outside of whatever degrees they hold; in fact, it's practically a prerequisite for being a successful academic writer. I know, without a doubt, that his work is exceptionally good, because I've seen for myself some of the projects that he wrote for my own private clients who needed work that I couldn't provide, whether because of the subject matter or just because of conflicting deadlines. I saw countless requests for his services for Nursing projects, in particular. Nobody who was familiar with his work and/or his reputation at the company where we competed against one another for over a decade or (especially) who ever actually saw any of his work would ever make comments along the lines of what I've been reading here, because nothing could possibly be further from the truth.

@ProfessorVerb
Are you coming out of retirement? We thought you had retired as evidenced by your ancient post somewhere in this forum. I am sure I read about it. I just won't bother to trace it. You aren't worth the time anyway. I just want to make a point here.

I guess finances are really bad for you these days as a retiree or, FLW is paying you well to come to his aid. I hope students will be willing to hire retired people like you and FLW who is old enough to be retired himself.

If you're an industry veteran, and you've made any money, you've written literally thousands of papers on 1. nursing 2. business admin and 3. social sciences, likely without a degree in any of them, and likely competently enough, or you wouldn't be an industry veteran. You're an ace!

If you're a shady noob with too much free time, and you're taking pot shots at the status quo from somewhere undisclosed, then you don't know or care that much about how a legit writer operates, or you wouldn't be on the sidelines nitpicking about nonsense. You're a loser!

Precisely. The person constantly posting to the contrary doesn't actually believe a word of what he's been posting, nor is he "retired" or "British," either. It's just his latest effort to try to hurt another writer (me) for the horrible sin of having actually managed to make a living in the industry in which he failed to do so. He's hardly a "noob," though; he actually started this hate campaign more than a decade ago under a different ID and recently crawled back out from under his rock to pick it up all over again, under no fewer than 4 other new and/or previously-dormant alternate IDs before settling on his current one and, so far, managing not to get it banned, the way all those other IDs of his got banned, literally within days of one another, for trolling me, and in the same exact thread, no less, from which his previous ID was banned, and starting with some of the very first posts of those new IDs.

Post #23 here, to bring you up to speed quickly: https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/position-numerous-academic-paper-around-3880/#msg87068

Lurk here on and off, so I know the score. I'd let them have the conspiracy theories; there's no knowing who's who here, anyway. Isn't that the way the internet was supposed to be?

@FreelanceWriter

Oh dear, still pedalling the same old nonsense that I'm not British.
Interesting that I knew your use of 'right on queue' (instead of 'right on cue') was a fundamental error in the use of British English grammar.

Right. You're a retired British writer and "not" just the same jealous failed/fired American writer-turned-stalker out of sheer jealousy, who spent years prosecuting the identical vicious personal hate campaign against me as "Editor75." Just as you did back then, you make constant references to me, even in threads that have absolutely nothing to do with me and/or in threads in which I haven't even posted. Likewise, you respond to any post of mine in any thread with some nasty attack and/or highly personal insults. Let's just consider some of the evidence in your posts under these two (main) IDs of yours, in addition to your posts under several other IDs (RustyIronChains, orchidgoblin, spacemic, and masonaid) in which you specifically admitted to being the same person as Editor75:

a1writer is "retired," is "not competing with" me, thinks I'm a "dumb" "boaster" "hack" who likes to "brag," and is highly offended that I "need to advertise on a forum."

Editor75 wasn't "here to get clients," wasn't "competing with" me, thought I was a "dumb" "boaster" "hack" who liked to "brag," and was highly offended that I advertise on this forum.

Despite your 10-month "British" masquerade, you haven't even thought to change your go-to vocabulary or most other elements of your vicious personal hate campaign. The only differences are that you now write in UK English and your claimed justification has evolved from Editor75's "principled" opposition to my paid advertising back then, to "protecting UK students" now. Let's just compare "their" word choices, insults, style, and claims about their purpose for being here and for perpetrating this non-stop highly personal vicious hate campaign against me motivated by nothing but sheer jealousy that I've actually managed to make a decent living at this since you got fired by an essay company, which you also admit (below). The one thing "both" of you also swear is that none of this has anything at all to do with jealousy over the fact that I've built a very solid reputation as a reliable writer who even managed to earn the respect of many of my legitimate competitors.

Right. In an industry absolutely polluted by outright scam companies and totally fraudulent writers using anonymous emails and websites, ESL hacks, and criminal blackmailers, your main focus is on the one writer who's been doing business here, honestly and openly for 14.5 years under the exact same ID that was also my writer ID at every essay company for which I ever worked, whose complete personal ID info is well known to the forum Admin (because I pay them to advertise here), and who has received support from many other legitimate writers with very long histories on this forum, even though they are (and/or were) my direct competitors.


https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/integrity-client-satisfaction-big-problem-custom-164/#msg86396


https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/thing-paper-1619/#msg61106


https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/thing-paper-1619/#msg61106


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/top-ten-ways-becoming-better-academic-freelance-writer-3486/#msg86340


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/quick-freelance-writers-5636/#msg75451


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/legitimate-writing-sites-work-347/2/


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/quick-freelance-writers-5636/#msg75459


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/legitimate-writing-sites-work-347/2/


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/initiate-process-writer-2565/#msg50816


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/top-ten-ways-becoming-better-academic-freelance-writer-3486/#msg86340


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/new-anyone-luck-writer-1742/2/#msg61852


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/new-anyone-luck-writer-1742/2/#msg61852


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/avoid-dishonest-clients-3489/#msg86536

On the topic of "boasting" and "bragging, let's just see which one of us is actually in that particular habit. Keep in mind that under both of these IDs, he lectures other people about "psychological projection."



https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/thing-paper-1619/2/#msg61212

Before he was a1writer or Editor75, he was RustyIronChains, which Editor75 also admitted, in addition to also admitting that he used to be a "fraudster" and that some of his other IDs include "spacemic" and "masonaid" and "orchidgoblin" (below). Naturally, orchidgoblin/Editor75 and spacemic all magically show up to pile on with a1writer, right in this thread: https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/legitimate-writing-sites-work-347/2/#msg86185 But let's get back to some of the evidence of his (own actual) bragging and boasting over the same exact claims (the size of his house, being a "published author," his Mercedes, and how much money he's made) under at least three of his many IDs.


https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/fraud-galore-academia-research-1287/2/#msg22726


https://essayscam.org/forum/ot/editor-pathetic-idiot-5123/


(Post # 66) https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/legitimate-writing-sites-work-347/2/#msg86181


https://essayscam.org/forum/es/experiences-bestessays-2885/#msg51275


https://essayscam.org/forum/es/genuine-companies-outsource-esl-writers-personal-473/#msg85599


https://essayscam.org/forum/es/experience-nycfreelancewriter-6683/#msg85719


https://essayscam.org/forum/es/academic-writing-providers-orders-refunds-2897/#msg85799

An observation that you are dishonest by breaking English law, is not a personal attack.

Highlighting by reference to Australian case law, that you are subject to English law although you say you aren't, is not a nasty attack.

Pointing out your fundamental grammatical error of 'right on queue' where you display a breathtaking ignorance of British English grammar, is not a personal attack.

These are all facts and it doesn't matter who I am, because these facts speak for themselves about you.