There is writing supplement for which I’d like to use parts of an essay I wrote during my junior year. Our teacher required us to submit this essay on Turnitin.com. Since colleges have methods of checking for plagiarism, would submitting it to that website cause it to appear plagiarized?
You should talk to the teacher/professor, show him/her your original essay, explain that you want to expand on work that you had previously written. And then do just that.
Sorry, I realize this was not very clear. The writing supplement is a college admission supplemental essay, and the essay I would like to reuse parts of was written this previous year (I will be a senior in high school now, applying to college this fall). Since the essay I wrote has been submitted on Turnitin.com, I’m wondering if this would cause colleges to detect plagiarism, being the essay is on a database now?
You are the original author? I don’t believe that a person can plagiarize something they themselves have written. The only issue I see is if the requirement is for something entirely new and you reuse a prior essay.
Well it is possible that a college could put it in, have the system detect plagiarism, and not bother to check if the author is the same person. I’m not very familiar with how searching on turnitin works - is there a field to enter the essay AND name of author or just paste the essay? Maybe you could consult with the teacher who used the site and see how it works?
It seems like it could be a bit of an unnecessary risk.
Hmm…that’s a gray area because of the turnitin factor.
Everybody recycles their essays for colleges, scholarships, etc. That part is generally expected and accepted, and most essays have different word counts and slight differences in their prompts. If organizations do a plagiarism check, they will see that the “plagiarized” parts are your own writing and what percentage of the writing overlaps. To avoid this potential problem, however, you probably want change some of the exact wording (and who knows, by doing so, you’ll likely improve it!)
The other scenario that I addressed earlier is whether or not you are recycling your own work for a class in order to get out of writing papers, etc. that are course requirements. It is assumed that you are doing original work for all of your classes. That said, it is often the case that academic expand on their previous works, but you’d need to be transparent about doing that.
I think it is perfectly fine as long as you expand on/make changes to what you have previously written. My D used bits and pieces of an self-reflection type of essay she wrote in high school for her common app essay and it was no issue. She did not just cut and paste the entire school assignment but a piece of that school essay had something she felt was an important part of the story she wanted to tell in her common application essay so she edited that piece and included it in the new common application essay.
@techmom99 I have heard teachers say that you can “plagiarize” your own work by using the same essay twice for two different classes/assignments when each was supposed to be original work.
@happy1 -
I agree. That’s why I discussed whether or not the essay was supposed to be original work. One of my sons wrote a paper for APUSH that he adapted for an elective in World War 2 studies. However, I don’t think he had to put it on turnitin as I believe only English teachers were using it at our school then. Now, social studies, science and even health teachers are using it.
Thank you everyone! I definitely didn’t plan pasting it word for word, but I think I will make sure each sentence it slightly changed just in case. Also I’ll ask my teacher, or try to find online, if plagiarism was to be detected whether or not my name would be associated with it.
Colleges generally expect you to write a new, original essay for application. I agree with those above who say that there’s no real risk of plagiarism (since you’re the original author), but I’d think twice about submitting past work–try to draft something new instead if at all possible. @yungambitious
Thank you for your input! The original piece was 16 pages long and the writing supplement is max. 500 words, so it will still be for the most part “new,”, but didn’t want to get caught with any problems if I use some of sentences or experts I like from it. @marvin100
Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem, @yungambitious