I wrote a great essay on a topic in an English class at my community college with a prompt similar to many used in college admission essays. I was wondering if it is allowed to use it when applying or not. I did initially submit the paper to TurnItIn.
Yes, so long as it isn’t published somewhere online. If it does get published then a lot of plagiarism detectors will go off and they will probably put you on the reject pile.
But a lot of people will recycle essays and just tweak the wording. Be careful, though, that you edit it well and your Harvard essay doesn’t say how much you love the town of New Haven.
@ninakatarina What was the prompt when you wrote your essay? And how long was it?
I applied to colleges in the spring of 1982. I honestly don’t remember any prompts except for MIT’s “Who is your favorite cartoon character and why?” I had half a page to fill with my essay on most paper applications, so I had to balance between fitting in as many words as I needed and making the letters readable. Then I handed the carved stone tablets to the pony express and waited eight months for them to get back to me. OK, that last sentence was an exaggeration. A slight exaggeration.