Two internet companies have partnered to provide institutions of higher education with new tools to detect plagiarism in college admissions applications.
IParadigm, makers of plagiarism detection software Turnitin, have teamed with Hobsons' ApplyYourself, an online application management system, to produce Turnitin for Admissions, according to a statement released by the two companies. The statement describes the new software as a novel resource for admissions offices.
Admissions offices that use Turnitin have the ability to upload essays and personal statements to be compared with all available material in the database.
Jeff Lorton, product and business development manager at Turnitin for Admissions, described the database as "unbelievably massive," gathering resources in a number of ways.
"One of the things we do is crawl the web the way that major search engines like Google or Yahoo do, but we go in as deep as possible and then archive it," Lorton said.
This process of archiving, which Turnitin has been doing for 10 years, retains information that has since been removed from the internet.
"Another part of this is we subscribe to major library databases," Lorton said. "This gives us access to newspapers, books, NPR transcripts, academic journals, encyclopedias and textbooks."
More than two dozen colleges worldwide have already adopted the software to ensure they admit honest students, including Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business. The Smeal admissions office decided to adopt the software after conducting a study in partnership with Turnitin Admissions.
The study reviewed 360 submitted applications and found 29 of them contained plagiarism. The school asked four applicants to rewrite their essays on the basis of borderline plagiarism, denied 15 applicants without interviews, canceled nine interviews and rescinded one applicant's admission.
Another report conducted by Turnitin in January 2010 found similar results. The Countrywide Similarity Report results present the findings of a comparison of 452,964 personal statements collected during the 2006-07 admissions cycle. The objective was to find similarity reports, which indicate high or significant levels of matching text, according to the report. The findings indicate that 44 percent of the personal statements contained matching text.
University Dean of Admissions Greg Roberts said he is not sure whether the University is interested in integrating this software into its admissions process and would have to do more research before coming to a decision.
Lorton said he had a hard time thinking of reasons why an admissions office might be hesitant to purchase an account with Turnitin for Admissions. He said there was no significant added time to the application review process, and he estimated the cost to be about $1 per applicant per year.
Roberts said, however, that he does not regard plagiarism as a major issue.
"I would not say that plagiarism has been a significant issue here in the past," Roberts said in an e-mail. "Since students sign the honor pledge when applying to U.Va. we believe instances of plagiarism on the essay are low"
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