Be professional about personal essay

ADARSH KHANDELWAL

An admissions consultant's primary task is to help students write the best personal essays. Personal essay has the potential to convince a college to accept your application. At the same time, writing a personal essay can be an intimidating task.

To secure admission in a reputed institute, some students take services from others, who then write the essay on their behalf. Some even try to submit essays that they find online as their own work. This is considered plagiarism and is a serious offense.

What counts as plagiarism?

Plagiarism is never the answer. Some might think that plagiarism isn't identifiable, but that's not true. Infact, someone who is in the business of judging a well-written personal essay will be able to make out the flaw very easily. Chances are, if you do not write your own application essay, you'll get caught, and here's why...

It is important to know how a university admissions' committee defines plagiarism to avoid disappointments later. Plagiarism is the act of claiming someone else's work as your own. The most obvious form of plagiarism in the college application process is hiring a freelance writer or company who will write your essay for you. If you are caught using their services, the negative repercussions will be many.

Another form of plagiarism is copying and pasting sentences or entire paragraphs you did not write. Also, over-editing from a parent, counsellor or tutor becomes plagiarism. Students can seek feedback from parents and teachers. But when you begin to let your helpers type for you, you should know you are harming your interests.

Why is plagiarising bad?

 The only person who can get you into the best school is you. If you end up being placed at a college on the basis of work that isn't yours, it could come back and bite you later. The goal of a personal essay is to share information about your personality. If the task is assigned to someone else, the essay won't serve the purpose.  

— The writer is co-founder Collegify

The practical approach

College applications give you many opportunities to share your opinion like personal statement, supplemental essays, or interview, and college admission's committees understand your personality accordingly. If you sound different in your personal statement from your interview, it will raise a red flag.

Your English grades and TOEFL scores can serve as a reference point for adcoms. If your scores are average, but your essay is extremely well written, adcoms may question your essay's credibility.

Adcoms know that there exist many consulting companies that are willing to write essays for a price. Because of this, any suspicion about the credibility of your personal essay will trigger an investigation.

There are several ways for colleges to find out that you haven't written your own essay. Since application materials are submitted online, it's easy to run plagiarism checks on essays through outside parties.