Implications of Plagiarism in the Admission Essay

Filed under admission essay, July 30th, 2010 by admin

Plagiarism is and will always be a big issue, especially if it involves the college admission essay. When writing your admission essay or personal statement, you have to create with a 100% original work. The following are just some of the possible complications if you have submitted a plagiarized essay and you were caught according to College Admissions Partners:

Your application will be rejected

First, it is obviously cheating and if you are caught, it is difficult to imagine that the admissions department of the college would not reject your application immediately.

Of course, one of the possible consequences of submitting a plagiarized essay is that your application will be rejected. The admissions committee will have to start an investigation to know the truth behind such an accusation but once the guilty party is proven to be guilty indeed, a rejected application is inevitable.

Your essay won’t reflect your personality

Colleges don’t just use the essay to evaluate your writing ability. They also use the essay to get some insight into who you are. If you are using a purchased or plagiarized essay, the essay will not really reflect you.

A plagiarized essay, especially if it’s purchased from an essay writing service, will definitely not reflect your personality. Keep in mind that in order to come up with an essay that’s truly yours, the topic, outline, and flow of the ideas should come from you. You can hire the services of an essay editing service but make sure that all of the ideas are originally yours.

Tips to avoid plagiarism

According to the same site:

Don’t cheat on the essay. It won’t help you and in many cases will actually hurt your chances for admissions. Take the extra time to understand the admission essay and to write from the heart.

Because the essay is your chance to tell the admissions committee a little something about you, take this as an opportunity to practice your writing and storytelling skills. Writing from the heart is always a good idea since sincerity is one big factor that admissions officers look into when reading thousands of application essays.

Other things to keep in mind

College Confidential states that:

Now, of course, thanks to the Internet, it’s possible for strangers who live thousands of miles apart to share (or steal) all sorts of information, including college essays. Even so, admission officials who spot potential plagiarism would mostly likely still go straight to the school counselors with their concerns, regardless of the distance that separates them.

Because the Internet can both be a curse and a blessing when writing your admission essay, you’d have to make sure that you use online sample essay appropriately. These materials should only be used as resource guides and not as actual sources of content or ideas.

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