Some students have been asking me if they could get a glimpse of my previous scholarship and application essays. But to be fair to everyone, I’m going to be consistent, and my decision is to not ever post or give out any of my previous essays.
Plagiarism
There are two main reasons for this. The first is simply because of possible plagiarism. I’d like to think that most students are not the plagiarizing type, but there are always a few students who get desperate at some point and end up plagiarizing. In addition, people tend to have distorted and different views on what actually constitutes plagiarizing – I have met students who didn’t think copying eight words in a row was plagiarizing. You might not realize it, but if you like something you see, you may subconsciously incorporate similar specific elements in your own essays, and you can imagine the weird trouble this could cause if a lot of students ended up with very similar application or scholarship essays. Overall, I feel it would be much safer for the application process if complete essays weren’t being thrown around the Internet.