A few college admissions committees are ramping up efforts to detect dishonest applicants.
About 25 universities and 20 application services are testing a plagiarism-detection service offered by iParadigms, the same company that provides Turnitin.com, a popular tool for catching plagiarism in academic writing, said Jeff Lorton, business manager at Turnitin for Admissions.
Turnitin for Admissions runs essays through a database of Internet content, journals, books, and previously submitted papers. It then provides a report detailing the number and nature of matches to see if any admissions essays appear to be copied from others.
“What we don’t do is call plagiarism out,” said Mr. Lorton. “What we do is give people a tool to show matches, and it’s up to that admissions officer to look at that document and make a determination.”
Pennsylvania State University’s M.B.A. program has been the first to sign up for the service.
But some admissions officials question the need for such a tool.
“I imagine there are students who may push the truth a little bit,” said Steve Thomas, director of admissions at Colby College. “But it’s rare that you find someone who really falsifies their application.” He wondered why colleges should “employ an outside agency to try and detect two or three people out of five or six thousand applications.”
David Hawkins, director of public policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said that he has not heard of plagiarism as a major issue in personal statements.
“Plagiarism doesn’t seem to be as big a problem in essays as other problems, such as shadow writing,” he said, referring to assistance on essays from teachers or parents. And admissions officers need to be careful about the way they interpret the information they get from the detection service, said Mr. Hawkins. “The opportunity to track down a false positive might be somewhat elusive for admission officers who are pressed for time.”
When Turnitin for Admissions conducted a study in which it analyzed about 450,000 personal statements, the technology found that 36 percent contained a “significant” amount of matching text (more than 10 percent). Matches came predominantly from Web sites offering sample personal statements.
“When you’ve got 10 or 15 percent and it’s something that’s supposed to be about yourself, that’s where the red flag goes up,” said Mr. Lorton.
