I’ve written the first draft of my personal statement for the common app, and I derived it’s structure from a previously written essay by an Ivy League alumni (not sure which one though).
However, before you guys start giving me Plagiarism awards, and telling me that I want to get into an Ivy so I copied the essay, I want to be clear that the only reason I copied the structure of the essay is because I had a VERY similar experience as did the past author. I was amazed to see there’s already an essay like that, as I was planning to write in something exactly like that.
By copying the structure, I meant that the sequence of events in the essay are almost identical. This has risen due to the fact that our experiences were very congruent.
Now, I’m at cross-roads between a good essay that truly expresses me and something that the admissions officers might see as plagiarism.
If anyone knows how this works, please do comment!
Also, if anyone is experienced with the essay process(and not a high schooler), if you’re interested, I can send you both my essay and the essay that I took my idea from.
Thanks in advance 
Also, the content is quite different. I put my essay into multiple plagiarism checkers (note that the essay’s structure that I used was published online), and I got a 100% unique result for my essay.
I’m just worried that the astute members of the admissions committee will recognize my essay as to something similar, and instantly disqualify me on grounds of plagiarism.
@SATHATER6969 - if your story is true and unique - and you are not copying the contents - you should be fine. If you can tell your unique story in your unique way instead of trying to sound similar to someone else - that would be the best play. In other words - if you had not read the other essay - would your essay still have been the same? If yes - leave it. If not - change it.
A lot of essays sound the same. Don’t be too reassured by that.
I personally think that if you know you did this, it’s not such a hot idea. Adcoms review thousands of essays, year in and year out, and can have their “Boy, this sounds familiar” moments.
It’s different when some piece gave you inspiration, you threw it out, then created your own work, not following his “structure” or flow.
Thanks for the advice guys. I’ll definitely tweak my essay a bit more.