<p>I would confront the elephant in the room. I’d send a letter to them apologizing for the mistake and taking responsibility for it. Try to use this as an example of how you face adversity. Anyone can just say “byebye Stanford”. You need to show just how much you want it and what your character consists of.</p>
<p>Get on the phone. Admit you reused part of your essay. Take responsibility. If the admission’s committee is smart they’ll take this in stride. If not, F it. If you take responsibility and they want to “teach you a lesson of just how unforgiving Stanford is”, then I don’t even know why you’d want to go their in the first place… a bunch of pretentious pricks.</p>
<p>This should be more of a test for them, than you. </p>
<p>Do it.</p>
<p>…and if any Stanford adcoms are reading this (to which I hope they are), a little humility goes a long way. And no, I wasn’t rejected from Stanford.</p>