Damning evidence indicates that college applicants are cheaters. A study by plagiarism software developer iParadigms found over a million matches in 200,000 of 453,000 applicants’ personal statements. The data is from 2007, but was released to coincide with the December 2009 introduction of Turnitin for Admissions, the new version of the company’s academic content plagiarism checker. In the report:
- 44% of the personal statements contained matching text
- 36% of those statements contained significant matching text
. . . so significant as to be suspected plagiarism, collusion, recycled or purchased documents.
Whose cheating, old chap?
So are all Americans cheaters? No. The report presents the results of “a comparison of 452,964 personal statements from an application service that receives approximately 500,000 applications per year, serving "institutions of higher education (300 in 2007) in a large English speaking country.” Based on the websites I viewed, the country is the U.K., not the U.S.
We Yanks are not squeaky clean, either. As reported in Campus Technology, "a soon to be published research study completed by iParadigms at an Ivy League university teaching hospital found that a substantial number of the residents plagiarized the personal statements included with their applications. This research will confirm that misconduct happens throughout the academic life of students.”
What did you expect?
However, let's compare college applications to the drudgery of applying for jobs on the internet.
First, it's laborious. Job postings require applicants to provide scads of personal data, previous employment experience and skills over and over for each position. A cover letter is necessary, and often a writing sample. Not to mention three or more references with all their contact information.
Second, no humans are involved. Computers scan for keywords and phrases that match a set of job qualifications. So if you write a scan-ready resume, you are probably using much the same language as every other accountant or engineer. If you are an imaginative and a creative writer, you run the risk of failing the scan criteria established by the heartless and unimaginative Cray XT5 Kraken supercomputer toiling away for your prospective employer.
Check out these sites and see an entire industry of folks happy to teach you how to play the game
Resume ToolBox “Amazing resumes in 10 minutes.”
ResumeEdge “Keyword-Optimized Resumes”
ZillionResumes.com “Over 3,930,000 Quality Resumes Find them now!”
PongoResume.com “Free resume templates, advice, tips, track activity and more”
Students who apply to several schools have to go through a similar process. Since so many of the colleges specify the same points to be made in the essay, why wouldn’t the written content be similar?
Jeff Lorton, product manager for Turnitin for Admissions, disagrees. He points out the witheringly low odds that certain word strings would ever appear coincidentally in these essays or personal statements. Further, he says humans actually read these documents rather than using a computer to scan them for keywords.
The Turnitin product provides the admissions counselor with a series of comparisons of the applicant's document with other documents gathered from around the world in huge databases. If there's too close a match, the school can determine what action, if any, action they want to take. Click on images to see sample screens.
A clever solution?
Perhaps the more important issue is not cheating the colleges or the employers, but cheating the applicants. If an essay mill or even a paid admissions consultant gets an applicant into a highly selective college for which he or she isn't qualified is doing the applicant no favors.
“Admissions counselors are not dumb, says Daniel Stern, president of College Essay Organizer. “They can tell a C student with average SAT scores didn’t write an essay in Shakespearean prose.” Even if the student got into that college, he or she will probably drop out later.
The goal of the application process – including the essay that accurately portrays the student’s passion and personality – is to find the right fit for buyer and seller. So why would a student cheat?
In a word, competition. Lorton says that someone who plagiarizes an application may not continue to cheat on coursework once in school. Stern says people don’t cheat because they are evil. They do so because they are overwhelmed or confused or saddled with crushing time constraints. And with high school counselors assigned hundreds, even a thousand students, there has been no good place to turn for help.
The online College Essay Organizer (CEO) gathers each applicant’s essay requirements for all selected colleges in a single document, then simplifies the job further by showing the applicant how to write the fewest high-quality essays to satisfy all requirements. So instead of having to write a dozen essays, he or she might only have to write three or four.
“This streamlining saves hours for both students and counselors, and creates a more productive, saner environment,” offers Stern. Applicants can focus their energy crafting their own essay, or at least fewer of them.
Because it does not provide sample essays or templates, Stern says CEO complies with ethical standards and business practices demanded by NACAC.
Will plagiarism detection put content resellers out of business? Lorton says no. It might put a dent in their business, but there will always be a desperate student with a credit card and someone who wants to make a buck.