Harvard Checking Authorship of Application Essays?

College applicants who are tempted to cut corners on their application essays by using 'boilerplate' text or by following an 'model essay' template might want to consider this news item:

According to the Harvard Crimson, Harvard University is one of several schools that is now using plagiarism detection software to verify the originality of application essays.

Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons told the Crimson that his staff catches "a handful" of suspect essays each year.

And most of those catches, he implied, have less to do with anti-plagiarism software than they do with admissions officers' own sense of what does and does not sound like an applicant's own writing.

Just a few of the clues that set off an admissions officer's internal alarm are: an essay that is far superior in writing to the rest of the application or to the applicant's SAT or ACT writing sample; an essay that sounds an awful lot like essays submitted by other applicants; and an essay that sounds too much like one of the 'model college application essays' in wide circulation.

Source: "Colleges Use Web Plagiarism Checks," by Aditi Balakrishna, the Harvard Crimson, April 10, 2007