<p>WAIT DOES THIS MEAN YOU AREN’T ALLOWED TO RECYCLE ESSAYS?! Almost every H-caliber school has an essay asking to elaborate on extracurriculars, and I used the same essay (or a slightly longer/shorter version) for all of them. Man, now I’m really nervous.</p>
<p>Turnitin is a good checker, though it has its flaws. Obviously if a text is over 80% word for word plagiarized then something is very fishy, but I’ve had essays with something like 30% “plagiarized” that were either common combinations of words (idiomatic phrases, titles of books, headings) or just quotations. Sometimes, even seemingly random sentences would be considered plagiarized, I suppose because someone out there in the world just happened to construct a sentence very similar to my own. I just hope turnitin doesn’t make it seem like I stole my essays from someone else!</p>