I know that colleges use software to check for plagiarism, but I was wondering if they check for previously submitted essays that have been reused by a different applicant. By this I mean supplemental essays that someone submitted to a college and then a different applicant submits the same supplement one or two years later. A guy in my class has a brother two years older who applied and was accepted to several top 20 colleges. We were talking about how much work supplemental essays are and he mentioned that he was just going to use the ones his brother wrote. I know that some schools change their supplemental essays, but many do not (like Georgetown, Cornell, Duke, Vandy, etc I believe). Does anyone know what kinds of mechanisms, if any, top 20 schools use to catch people reusing essays?
I have heard of students being caught. Definitely don’t do this and don’t encourage anyone to do it.
On the other hand, I would probably let the guy in your class do it and not say anything. He will find out and get what he deserves.
Definitely tell them not to do it. Intentionally deciding to not help someone by withholding important info is pretty dirty, regardless of what they “deserve”. If they know they can get caught and still do it, then at least you’ll have done the right thing anyways.
I’m in over my head here-- my honest answer is “I have no idea.”
But most schools assign one Admissions Officer to each geographic region. That means that the people who read his brother’s essays will be the same people reading his. Assuming his essay was any good, it was memorable enough to ring a bell.
And, of course, that’s leaving off the whole dishonesty issue.
Smarter people than the guy in your class have tried it and gotten caught.
Along the same lines, there are darn few really good essays, and there are essay topics that have been done to death as a search on this site will pull up several threads addressing that topic.
One should always assume that no 17 year old has ever come up with an idea to circumvent the system that an experienced AO has not thought of first. Regardless, spend time on your own application instead of worrying about anyone else’s.
For future reference, one thread per topic is allowed; I’ve merged your 2 identical threads.
@shkodra14, How is it “withholding information” or “dirty” to refuse to help cheaters and liars? This isn’t rocket science. A kid with the stats to get into a school ranked in the top 20 understands the definition of plagiarism. If he gets rejected, and gets his brother expelled in the process for helping him, I have zero sympathy. Let students who have some integrity fill those spots.
Well it’s not really OP’s business to tell or not tell.
Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing. Just focus on putting together the best application you can.
“If he gets rejected, and gets his brother expelled in the process for helping him, I have zero sympathy”
I agree completely. IMHO it would be highly (horridly) unethical to encourage anyone to cheat hoping that they will be caught. However, if an apparently smart person chooses to cheat on their own, each of us can decide on our own whether to try to help the cheater by pointing out that the consequences will be, or let the cheaters find out the hard way. If someone is already on their own inclined to cheat, I think that the world as a whole will be a better place if they learn the lesson “don’t cheat” in a manner that will stick with them for a while.
“Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing. Just focus on putting together the best application you can.”
I agree completely with this also. We each need to live an ethical life and succeed on our own merits. In the meanwhile there will be people around us who do whatever good or bad things they choose to do. Help the good people around you, don’t worry about the rest, and do the best that you can.