<p>I can explain it. Or at least I can explain why I was initially going to warn accepted students NOT to post their essays. Do you want your essay used for another student's application to (fill in the blank) university? But then I had a second thought. If you posted your essay online, would your essay then show up if a college routinely ran essays through tunitin.com or some other internet based plagiarism checking program? I honestly don't know how those programs work, but it seems that if you widely publicized your essay you would actually be better protected than if you PM'd the essay to another student.</p>
<p>Ya, I would love to peer edit anyone's essay.</p>
<p>ahhh...yes. Finally I'm getting some support here. And indeed, peer editing anyone's essays would be great!</p>
<p>I read scholarship applications for a committee and I can tell you plagiarism of ideas and words definitely occurs and it's a real turnoff. A seasoned application reader can get a hunch. As an earlier poster said - it's not fair to the EDers who worked so hard and were deferred. How would you like it if someone else had an unfair advantage over you?
PM-ing and peer editing privately is one thing, put posting them has some consequences that might get back to you.</p>
<p>ahhh...yes. Finally I'm getting some support here. And indeed, posting an essay is not so safe! (but definitely I'd have loved to read and have a feel of a student's essay accepted to Princeton!)</p>
<p>If a student gets caught "allowing" another student to cheat on a test, what happens? Possibilities:
1) teacher says, "Wow, John, that was so nice of you to share; I think I'll give you an A+ for helping Joe on his test"
2) papers ripped to shreds, score of "0" for both students involved
3) Suspended and "0's"
etc.</p>
<p>Sharing your college essays with others is nothing more than CHEATING, just as having someone write your college essays is CHEATING.</p>
<p>Now that is ridiculous...showing other people something that you have worked hard on so that they can see the calibur of work accepted to princeton is NOT cheating. Just because some people might 'cheat' and steal essays does not mean that ALL people would do that.</p>
<p>Now, the thread is getting more and more divided as it's proceeding. Let me give a good proposal............................if and only if the Princetonians want to help out other applicant's by showing them what sort of essays got them in, they should contact a reliable website which deals w/ college sample essays, college admission and stuffs (i'd rather prefer essayedge) and send their essays out there which would ensure that NONE can plagiarize their essays! Then they may attach the links to a CollegeDiscussion thread. At the same time all our crave for reading princtonian essays would be fulfilled too! (hope it's a decent conclusion!) Anyone disagree?</p>
<p>Let's not go on a moral crusade here. The point of this thread, as far as I understand it, wasn't to enable cheating, but to give people an idea of the quality of writing present in successful college essays. I checked out 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays from the library not because I want to go to Harvard or because I planned to copy the essays I found there, but because I wanted to see how impressive the accepted students' writing skills actually were (some were, others not so much). I've no intention of plagiarizing, but I needed the reality check; otherwise I would've gone on honestly believing that I needed to write Pulitzer-quality prose to get into college at all. Reading other people's essays helped me get past that. Surely that's not so reprehensible?</p>
<p>Talk about lack of confidence in one's own abilities. If you feel that you have to "study" the essays written by others so that you can replicate something similar...that is sad.</p>
<p>I thought Princeton wanted originality.</p>
<p>I don't deny ur points cameliasinesis, that's exactly what I do! But at the same time, I really don't want to see plagiarization going on (and yeah, NOt everyone out here will! but who knows?!) I guess there's an important sticky thread which tells about why NOT to post an original essay in CC! So definitely we don't want to promote plagiarization in CC (although no one intents to do so definitely!) But see, some must think like this
"oh, that's a nice essay indeed why don't I use those sentences and points since the colleges would have NO IDEA from where I might get it! I suppose turnitin won't be able to find me out either!"</p>