Attention future college essay writers.  Don’t cheat!  Plagiarism doesn’t pay.  More and more schools, especially the very competitive colleges are using Turnitin.com for questionable freshmen essays.

Currently, more graduate than undergraduate schools are using it in the admissions office. But with new technology being developed that allows large numbers of essays to be reviewed quickly this will become more common.  Also, by scanning lots of new essays, they will be added to the database for future comparative testing.

For example, let’s you write a a college essay and the school you are applying to submits all essays to Turnitin.com.  Your younger brother, two years from now finds your essay, likes it, and decides to help himself to a few paragraphs.  If the school he applies to uses Turnitin.com it is likely that he will be caught.

Of course, who knows what the future holds with college admission requirements.  The essay is optional at more  and more colleges.