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I wonder if schools use any sort of service to check whether personal statements are plagiarized. There are a lot of personal statement drafts and edits in this forum, and I wonder if posting here puts people at risk of having someone steal their PS ideas/content.

Ling520 wrote:I wonder if schools use any sort of service to check whether personal statements are plagiarized. There are a lot of personal statement drafts and edits in this forum, and I wonder if posting here puts people at risk of having someone steal their PS ideas/content.

I would say generally no. I do think however that if they stumble upon something that sounds too good to be true writing wise, meaning a prose that is really recognizable or sounds like something that is classic PS they may google it. I did that the other day.
I am reading a collection of personal statements form the 80s and mid 90s from a book that is only sold used and is not published anymore. I started reading an incredible beginning that blew me away. I googled the sentence verbatim and quickly found it on google docs.. the funny thing is that I found a mention to that exact statement in a different "how to" site for PSs. I would not toy with that idea. What worked for some in college with papers and lazy profs who don't even want to read the paper itself let alone check it for plagiarism, will not work here IMHO.

good luck!

Lear22 wrote:

Ling520 wrote:I wonder if schools use any sort of service to check whether personal statements are plagiarized. There are a lot of personal statement drafts and edits in this forum, and I wonder if posting here puts people at risk of having someone steal their PS ideas/content.

I would say generally no. I do think however that if they stumble upon something that sounds too good to be true writing wise, meaning a prose that is really recognizable or sounds like something that is classic PS they may google it. I did that the other day.
I am reading a collection of personal statements form the 80s and mid 90s from a book that is only sold used and is not published anymore. I started reading an incredible beginning that blew me away. I googled the sentence verbatim and quickly found it on google docs.. the funny thing is that I found a mention to that exact statement in a different "how to" site for PSs. I would not toy with that idea. What worked for some in college with papers and lazy profs who don't even want to read the paper itself let alone check it for plagiarism, will not work here IMHO.

good luck!

What was the name of the book?