recycling personal statements

[sam86]

hey, i see on the ucas site it says they check your PS to see if its your own work. I'm quite proud of my 1st time (school leaver) PS and am thinking of re-using the odd line / para in my new one for when I try graduate entry - do you think this is ok, or should it all be new?

[Gizmo says -]

aye macca, use it, dont abuse it.


your PS.

[tigger29]

It's only wrong (actually it's disgraceful) if you use parts of other peoples personal statements. If it's all your own work then why shouldn't you re-use it?

[sajeev86]

I was told once that plagiarism also includes copying your own work from a previous occasion.

It's probably best you ask UCAS whether you can.

[tigger29]

There are several forms of plagiarism including: -
* Using published ideas as one's own,
*Representing excerpts or images from books, journals or papers published on the web as one's own work,
*Copying the work of another student or another person and presenting it as one's own,
*Collaborating inappropriately with another student when the assignment requires individual work,
*Resubmitting substantive excerpts of your own work from other assignments as a new piece of work.
Plagiarism can occur in a small section or sections of a piece of work through to the whole of an assignment. Whatever the extent it is a serious offence.
(The above has been directly copied from the following wepage Plagiarism - a students' guide to avoiding plagiarism and referencing correctly : HERO

What I will say about the last point, and to qualify my last post on this thread, is that your personal statement is exactly that - yours. However I would be extremely surprised if you had nothing new to write in your ps that you feel you should re-use your old one (from at least 3 years ago right?) If you cannot write a better one with your new experiences then I am afraid that you may not stand much of a chance at graduate-entry level, I would have expected things to be very different now for you compared to when you were applying for your first degree.
Your aims and aspirations may not have changed but surely you can find another way to express them? What worked for you as an A-level student may not work as a graduate - after all I would expect the admissions peeps to be expecting something a little more from a more mature candidate wouldn't you? I may be wrong, and you may disagree - I can only go from my own experience, I too was proud of my first personal statement but being a different person now to back then I don't think that it does me justice now.
Besides with all that work experience that you will undoubtedly have by the time you come to write your new ps, you probably won't have room for any of the old stuff!

Good luck with your application