College Admission Essays: Noting a Few Words About Plagiarism

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Plagiarism is intellectual theft — swiping someone else’s brainchild and claiming it as your own. Most frequently found in research papers and homework assignments, plagiarism may still rear its ugly head in an admission essay, particularly one that asks you to comment on a social issue. Because plagiarism is a serious academic crime, calling for the school equivalent of capital punishment (expulsion, or suspension if you’re lucky), you need to recognize and avoid it. In the following sections I explain the two forms of plagiarism most likely to appear in your essay.

Quoting without Giving Credit

If you place the exact words of another writer or speaker into your essay without enclosing the words in quotation marks and citing the author, you’re plagiarizing. The solution is simple; give credit where credit is due. Here’s an example:

Plagiarized passage: Whenever my grades slip a notch, I immediately buckle down and review all my notes until I’m sure that the problem has been remedied. Good grades are money in the bank, the capital I will spend on my future.

Corrected version: Whenever my grades slip a notch, I immediately buckle down and review all my notes until I’m sure that the problem has been remedied. As multibillionaire Ariadne Weaver once said, “Good grades are money in the bank, the capital I will spend on my future.”

As you see in the preceding correction, only six words and two punctuation marks divide the ethical from the unethical.

Swiping Ideas

If you snatch someone else’s thoughts and claim them as your own, you’ve signed up for a stretch in the plagiarism penitentiary. Swiping ideas is a no-no even if you change the wording of the original source. For example, suppose you’re reading about the Powderpuff Revolt in history class. (Don’t look for it in your schoolbooks, or anywhere else, for that matter. The Powderpuff Revolt is a product of my very strange fantasy life.) Here are a passage from the book and a plagiarized essay paragraph, along with a possible correction:

Original passage: The Powderpuff Revolt teaches us that human rights, in this case the right to powder one’s nose without governmental interference, are an extraordinary motive for social change. The human spirit tends towards freedom, and any government that forgets this truth must arm itself and prepare to use force to subdue its own people.

Plagiarized passage: The issue that most concerns me is human rights. Throughout history we see that human rights act as a strong force, motivating people to work for social change. If a government ignores this fact, the government will eventually have to use weapons to control its subjects.

Corrected version: The issue that most concerns me is human rights. I recently read an account of the Powderpuff Revolt by historian A.J. Tomato. Tomato makes the point that human rights act as a strong force, motivating people to work for social change. If a government ignores this fact, Tomato says, the government will eventually have to use weapons to control its subjects.

The example clearly shows that staying on the right side of the academic law is quite easy. The addition of a word or two crediting the source is enough to take care of the problem.