UCLA rejects 52 applicants for plagiarism in their essay

First I applaud UCLA for doing this. Guys and gals who send in essays that are 85% copied from BusinessWeek's list of great B school essays (which I've read to get ideas, but iI still use my own at the end) should not even get into any school. I also agree with the B school to not tell the students this either. They're not students there to begin with, so why waste time on it?

The big disadvantage about these plagiarism checks is that those of us not in school can't check these on our own. We can use some websites to check this stuff on the surface and that is what I have done to avoid such a situation where 10%+ is allegedly unoriginal. IF the Adcom reads one of essays, uses a checker and see that 3-6% is possibly plagiarized, sees the content, which ends up as a common clause, then I don't think it's a big deal. If you write "I love you" or some clause like that, it will show up on some plagiarism database. I think it's content where people get in trouble. Whole sentences, paragraphs, etc.

I don't quote things from JFK or MAya Angelou or Reagan or whoever else. It makes me sound unoriginal, though for some others, it could enhance your essays. If anyone doesn't want to ask what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country, and is dumb enough not to attribute it to one of these three, the applicant shouldn't be admitted, and this saying is pretty common. Oops, that last line is plagiarism....

The one thing about these essays however is that we can't attach footnotes or a bibliography of where we get ideas from either. Also many of the best checkers are restricted to academics and we can't use them to "get an edge" or to "cover our bases". But at the end of the day, we're here to talk about US not the guys who kicked ass on BusinessWeek 10 years ago!

There's a pretty big difference between an essay that is, to quote novanative, "85% copied from BusinessWeek's list of great B school essays" and one that happens to hit the 10% mark on turnitin. As posters above who are familiar with the software said, that's a very low threshold. I would feel better if UCLA came out and said, "In each and every case the plagiarism was so extensive and blatant that these applicants certainly knew what they were doing" or else gave the alleged offenders a chance to defend themselves. I'm not sure what the miss rate is for turnitin, but I have to think that out of 50 applicants at least one or two might have a case if UCLA is using 10% for the threshold.

There has to be some algorithm to calculate what percent of a doc is plagiarized on turnitin, etc. I would think that with most essays, there shouldn't be more than 5-6%, to account for common clauses. However, I'd think that an essay at the 10% mark will be read more closely too. I would hope so as well, because one or two people are likely at that specific mark.

The way I see it is that UCLA is looking at ways to shorten the list of candidates. 10% is too low and not giving chance to candidates saying that, "they will come up with stories" is a fallacy in UCLA's logic. UCLA already believes what it wants to believe. I am surprised this is the type of answer from a college for not giving students a chance to explain their position.

I think 10% is also low. I would hope most of the 52 rejected candidates were pretty high though 25% or more. But a line has to be drawn somewhere and if you let someone explain a certain part of his or essay, you may have to grant that possibility for everyone.

The algorithm that is being used to declare some material as copied must be made available to public. In case they can't do so, the school must have a site that candidates can use to check whether their essays are being marked by the software. At least this will ensure that candidates are not termed as cheaters and applicants have a venue to check their essay before they submit. That is what my school was doing when it used the turnitin software.

Throwing in numbers is not the answer: be it 25% or 100%% - it doesn't matter. How sure are you of the process used by the software to check the accuracy of the essays. What if it's your own essay about "why you want an MBA" that was compared by this software? The very same essay that was submitted to another school.

I like your idea, but the schools will point to some sites where you can do it for a fee. I would hope that the ownership of essays is noted in documents if a situation arises where an applicant could be plagiarizing him or herself when it's not the case.

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FYI.. https://turnitin.com/en_us/about-us/priv ... protection

I think this is the only real case reasonable people should worry about. I believe they are reading your submitted essay against the potential match, and when both essays mention the same jobs and extracurriculars, it will be fairly obvious you wrote both.

During the whole HBS 119 thing, Stanford gave each applicant a chance to explain himself or herself and ended up rejecting everyone. I wish UCLA would allow people to explain, but I bet you would see the same outcome.

Until software can detect that your long-term goal isn't really to start an NGO benefitting one-armed blind kids in Africa, this probably isn't that big of a deal.

So there's that. Also, you don't hold the copyright to your essay - the school you applied to does. So could get murky when using similar prose in essays for multiple schools

Yes I think this is the more troubling case.

I agree with tctc23 that the 10% threshold seems too low, especially with respect to goals essays. On my essays I used essentially the same statement about my goals. I have something I want to do, and it doesn’t matter what school I get into, I’ll want to do that same thing wherever I go. I did not use any consultants, and I wrote my essays entirely on my own, but will I get dinged if 1 school puts my essays in the database before the rest of my applications?

I envision a scenario where someone writes a very specific goals statement: “My goal is to become CEO of the world’s largest armadillo breeding operation, ARMcorp, located in the balmy reaches of Northwestern Finland, merging my interests in armadillo husbandry and investment banking to provide armadillo-less families across the globe a chance to adopt these wonderful creatures.”

This very specific goals statement is then used in multiple essays, but is flagged and the applicant is dinged for plagiarism because the statement (45 words by my count) is more than 10% of the essay length. If the admissions boards are dinging applicants without looking at the content that is flagged, it would be a poor decision on their part. I have to presume they are looking at the content.

For my optional essay I needed to address my low undergraduate GPA, and I used a standard template, telling a personal story about my life. I tweaked the story for each of my applications, but I know that there are a few sentences that overlap between applications. I can’t create five different narratives for why I didn’t perform at a high level in undergrad for each one of my admissions essays.

I’m all for dinging those people who really plagiarized. Maybe there is a worse punishment (permanently subtracting 100 points from their GMAT scores?) If you’re too lazy to write a few admissions essays, you don’t deserve a spot at a top B school like Anderson. I suspect the Adcoms are doing a bit of research into these matches though to make sure that they really are catching the cheaters. At least I hope that is the case.

Yes, this. It's awesome that UCLA is throwing sharp elbows at plagiarism and advertising the effort, but a bright-line rule of "if 10%+ then ding" seems inconsistent with the presumption of innocence. Probably there won't be any good explanations, but offering an opportunity to respond at least strengthens the impression that there is some sort procedural due process at work and enhances transparency (to the accused, at least).

That said, I have no love to lose for plagiarists and they deserve to get dinged/black-listed/etc.

I see a lot of people worried about plagerizing themselves. That is, that they apply to multiple schools with simliar essays, and then 1 school picks up a match on turnitin because the other school put your essay in the TurnItIn database.

You guys really shouldn't worry about this in the slightest!! You CAN'T plagerize yourself. Any essay that goes into TurnItIn, I would have to believe would have your name as the author. So when there's a match, it's obvious that you are the same people. There is no way to prove plagerism, unless you know the true author on both sides, b/c there is now way to say that those two sides aren't the same person.

Stealing intellectual capital and ideas from others will earn you a ding. Taking your ideas and using them across multiple essays for multiple schools is absolutely reasonable. It's your essay and ideas! YOU can do WHATEVER you want with them.

Also, everyone is speaking on the 10% number being too low. I don't think there is any way for us to know what is too low or what is too high. But I'm 100% sure that adcoms are going to be thoughtful about if that person actually plagerized or not, and I'd say in most cases it would be absolutely obvious. So anyone out there that didn't use an unethical admissions consultant to write their essays, and truly used their own ideas, then you're fine! The odds of having 10% overlap that is obviously plagerism is 1 in a billion unless you actually plagerized. People don't just randomly come up with the exact same paragraphs, or long strings of pros. It just doesn't happen that way.

Thank you.

Also with 52 apps being cited for plagiarism, there were 3367 (2727 full time and 640 part time) total apps to UCLA last.

52 is about 2% of all apps, but since there are still deadlines left, 52 is probably as much as 5% of all apps cited for plagiarism because there still is a deadline left to go.

If you go back and read the original article you'll notice that they're saying they've seen 1-2% of applicants plagerizing with these 52. Also, it says that the 10% threshold is "conservative" making me think that 10% is actually a much higher threshhold then some might think. For instance, I just did a full check of all my essays in a few free plagerism online tools and I came back with 0% plagerism (obviously, b/c every word is my own). I did a check of a few online articles and businessweek example essays and they all come up with tons of matches and exactly the places I could go to find the originals. I know this isn't the greatest way to know for sure, but its nice. Now the biggest check I did, was instert an entire long (25 wordsish) sentence into my personal essay from one of the business week essays and BAM! The program picked out the sentence and told me exactly where it came from.

I saw that it looks like the program I used breaks the essays down by sentences and certain strings of words and looks for exact matches. WHen it finds it, it gives me an exact location of the original. From there, it would be easy for an adcom to look back and forth between the two and make a decission as to plagerism. I have to think its very easy and very obvious in most cases if in fact the author is lifting quotes.

Anderson is leading the way for top business schools! With MBA ethics in question, it's nice to know that some top schools are taking strong stances.