<p>I'm not sure whether someone else took them or threw them away but if it's the former I need to do something.</p>
<p>You can’t “make sure people won’t use your essay”. But, seriously, it’s very unlikely that someone would do that, for he or she would gain nothing from it.</p>
<p>If you are totally convinced sombody has stolen your essays just to jeopardize your chances, then it would be a reason to contact colleges and, maybe, write better essays.</p>
<p>I worked really hard on those essays and they’re really good. I don’t want to write a new set. Plus I don’t have time. </p>
<p>I’m thinking of contacting the schools, but they might think I’m absentminded or paranoid, and either could work against me. On the other hand if I don’t contact, on the small chance that someone else submits something significantly similar, it’s probably an auto-reject for both. Why would a selective college waste its time ascertaining true authorship when it has a backlog of other competitive applicants?</p>
<p>If you are really worried, tell them your thoughts. You don’t need to tell colleges you’re afraid that someone might have copied your essays; just tell them you’ve lost a piece of paper containing your essays and would like the schools to keep your e-mail for the record.</p>
<p>And that wouldn’t seem absentminded or paranoid to you?</p>
<p>Just tell them what you’re telling me; that you hope this action won’t be misinterpreted and that you’re e-mailing them just for the record.</p>
<p>Doesn’t requesting that they not misinterpret itself suggest paranoia?
There’s absolutely nothing else I can do to prevent another’s plagiarism?</p>
<p>I’m losing a lot of sleep over trying to remember where I put them. Hopefully they were discarded. I don’t see how anyone could steal them–do most people take interest in documents that don’t pertain to them at all? People leave print-outs in the library all the time. I usually don’t even look at them. </p>
<p>What I actually fear is that someone who didn’t intend to apply but now decides to apply now that he has an essay in hand, since that saves him a lot of time.</p>
<p>Hopefully you put details in your essay that matches the rest of your application that most other applications won’t.</p>
<p>As I said, it’s very unlikely that someone has taken your essays for further misuse. Like you said, you maybe has simply dropped it somewhere or have forgotten the paper in one of your jeans’ pockets. That actually happened to me once; two weeks after I lost my writings, I found the essays on my pocket.</p>
<p>I reiterate: only if you are totally convinced sombody might has stolen your essays just to jeopardize your chances, then it would be a reason to contact colleges.</p>
<p>I know you are under pressure because this is a huge process or your academic life, but it’s almost guaranteed that nothing will happen. Chilax :)</p>
<p>Why aren’t they stored on a computer somewhere?
Can’t you just rewrite them, anyway? Your essays should be so unique to your experiences and ideas that no one else could use them, and you should find it easy to type them up again.</p>
<p>1] If you left it in your school library, the librarian would probably have the decency to pick it up and keep it for safekeeping. At least, my school librarian has the decency. Hopefully yours does too, if this is the case. :P</p>
<p>2] To be frank, just think of the attention span of an average high school student. If anyone were to find an essay on the desk or the floor, they would just skip over it. If they were nice enough to pick it up, they would most likely just discard it or give it to the one in charge of the area (Again, your librarian hopefully). But really, who has the attention span or the time to read essays they randomly find?</p>
<p>3] Let’s consider intentional sabotage. First off, why? I don’t see any reason why anyone would jeopardize their own chances into college just to hurt yours. Unless they weren’t planning to apply to the same colleges as you were. But applications cost a lot of money and they must hate you pretty badly to go through all that trouble. And this leads to the question regarding your potential enemies.</p>
<p>
Wouldn’t mean anything if there was a copying issue. Someone who found them could just as easily send this email.</p>
<p>Is your essay a “Why ______ College/University” essay? If not, how would someone know where the essay was going? Or is it a very specific prompt/mention the school?</p>
<p>^Now we’re talking about someone really evil. </p>
<p>Like CalvinTBOD, I too believe this is not a situation for you to be worrying.</p>
<p>seriously buddy your worry is unwarrented. you don’t have to contact colleges or anything like that. no ones running around trying to steal your essays</p>
<p>
I have them stored on my computer so that’s not the problem. I don’t have any enemies here so no one took them to jeopardize my chances.
There’s nothing I can say to persuade them without inculpating myself in the process? </p>
<p>
It’s not a very specific prompt (in fact just the opposite) but I made it very specific to that school. I mention the school’s name several times. It’s a very competitive school, but lots of people have misplaced faith in essays’ compensatory ability. </p>
<p>In reality there are only two places I could’ve left it. One is the library, 3 minutes before closing time. If that’s the case then the janitor definitely threw them out because he does that daily and there’s no time for anyone else to scoop them. However, if he already did his rounds before the library closed then I doubt he would’ve repeated it later that night. Therefore someone who came in the next morning could’ve seen the essays there. </p>
<p>The other is a temporary locker, which I left unlocked because I had to use the lock for something else that night. I had a few books in there but otherwise nothing that would interest someone (really old PS2?). The next morning there was a 3-hour window during which someone could’ve opened the locker and took the essays. Upon review of my locker’s contents nothing else was missing (if I had even put the essays in there). I think there’s a strong chance I put the essays in there because I had brought a book with me to the library computer and I found the book in the locker. Unless I really left them in the library, the book and essays were together. </p>
<p>Normally when there are stuff in unlocked lockers people would just go, oh this one’s taken, let me throw them in the next one. Therefore, I also think it’s unlikely that someone opened the locker, saw a bland piece of paper with blue scribbles on it, caught the school’s name in the middle of the single-spaced page, and thought he could use it. </p>
<p>If I had left them by the computer though, someone could’ve read them while waiting for the computer to load (and that’s a really long time). If I had put them in the lockers then people are darting in and out of the lockers anyway, no one is staying around to read a paper (although it takes 2 minutes tops to get to the college’s name).</p>
<p>Ultimately, there’s still the possibility that someone else has them and might just think they’re good enough to justify an application fee, if not to the college on the essay, then another Common App member. So if I apply to Common App member A and he applies to CA member B, I’d think colleges can still convene with each other to discuss cross-application eyebrow-raisers.</p>
<p>I hope no one has it, or else you might be hosed …</p>
<p>Honestly, I would leave this one alone. You have the originals so that’s not a factor. One large possibility is that the janitorial staff threw them away. Another possibility is yes, someone picked them up. If in fact this person is dishonest enough to want to use the essay for their own gain in all probability it will not affect your entrance. Most application deadlines were 1/1 or 1/15. If this is a recent event, it is too late for the essay to find it’s way into the same batch of applications being reviewed as yours.</p>
<p>If this is really upsetting you, after your decision is made in April you may want to contact your guidance counselor and find out what the next step, if any, would be to alert the university that your essay was possibly stolen after you submitted yours. My strong feeling is you will be told to relax and let it go.</p>
<p>No the deadlines havn’t passed for me yet, so it’s still a possibility. I told my counselor and he said he’ll keep an eye out for anyone coming in with a suspiciously similar list of schools weeks before the deadline. However, since all my schools are CA members, someone else applying to other CA members but not necessarily the same ones may still prompt mine to reject me even if I would have otherwise been admitted.</p>
<p>There’s really nothing I can tell colleges to authenticate my authorship?</p>
<p>I don’t have a clue what the problem is, and I don’t know why so many people have posted in this topic and haven’t pointed out how silly this is. What reason would anyone have to use your essay to apply to a college?</p>
<p>Case 1: Someone was planning to apply to College X, saw your essay was better, and decided to use it. Well, that’s stupid, because they’d be worrying about the same thing you are, except their fears would be justified because you’re guaranteed to use that essay. Thus, they would knowingly be sending in an essay someone else is using, which would disqualify their chances.</p>
<p>Case 2: Someone wasn’t planning to apply to College X, saw your essay, and figured they now had a chance. Well, that’s also stupid, not only for the reason above but also because essays themselves don’t determine acceptance or rejection. One who was already outside the range of College X cannot bring himself into said range with a stellar essay. Essays are only differentiators among already-qualified people, and an already-qualified person would have been figured into Case 1.</p>
<p>Case 3: Someone just wants to sabotage you from getting into a college they aren’t even applying to. Illogical.</p>
<p>Stop freaking out, someone probably just threw them out. If you tell this to a college they’re going to think you’re paranoid and weird, like I do.</p>
<p>What about a haphazard edit to eliminate the essays’ carbon copy status but nevertheless retentive of a significant resemblance?</p>