Interesting that the research papers were published while they were in high school. Seems to be multiple issues here, not just with the plagiarism but with the accusations on S. Korean cabinet member behavior.
Get the popcorn ready!
The subject matter of the 5 research papers is varied enough (autism, oral health, candlelight vigil, hate crimes against Asians, etc.) that it looks awfully strange to be covering all those topics in less than one year (2021) no less. At least to me.
Sky Castle, anyone? Sky Castle - Wikipedia
The linked page suggests that it may be politically motivated opponents of the cabinet appointee who went digging for the scandal involving the students in question.
But would this have flown under the radar if the students were not related to someone with motivated political opponents?
Of course, it would. Plagiarism, and other types of fraud, are much more widespread than a few cases that are identified. There’re just too many incentives to cheat, and few incentives, and certainly not enough resources, to identify the cheaters. AOs can’t even authenticate the stories in personal essays, how can they be expected to identify research fraud?
Hmm, perhaps any submissions or citations of work needs to also be submitted in such a way that an admissions officer can run it through CopyLeaks while they’re reading the rest of the application. And if there’s plagiarism, then it’s an automatic rejection.
But yes, it does appear as though these students plagiarized others’ work. Yes, it does seem like a political hit job. And yes, I suspect these weren’t the only individuals who applied to Top X schools with plagiarized materials.
If a university wanted to do this, verification of published papers and other prominent achievements, awards, etc. would have to be done as a separate parallel step to avoid slowing down the admission reading process (where the first admission readers typically take 10-15 minutes per application).
But then probably not many universities want to do this work. Analogously, Singer’s fake athlete scam worked because university admission offices did not bother to verify the athletic achievements of the “athletes”.
I guess I’m scratching my head wondering why 4000 folks would sign a petition regarding getting allegations of plagiarism by students. I would think Penn knows full what to do for cases of academic dishonesty.
Fully appreciate I might be missing why so many people are signing this.
A fair number of the comments by petition signers are written in Korean. Perhaps the situation and petition attracted political interest in the Republic of Korea (and perhaps among expats and immigrants who have strong opinions on the politics there).
Every single former president of South Korea in recent memory was jailed after s/he left the office and the opposition took power (except the most recent one who left only a couple of weeks ago). Korean politics seem to be more hard-nosed. The current president who was just sworn in was a former prosecutor and led the opposition party in the election. The uncle of the students who face plagiarism accusation is the newly appointed justice minister who would be in charge of prosecution of members of the previous government.
There’re more incentives in this case than in other similar cases.
Some serious nepotism going on there…personally I never vote for a relative of a previous politician just as a philosophical point.
There was an impassioned post on Reddit/a2c not so long ago about how it’s very much pay to play for Asia-based students applying to US colleges. Interestingly (unsubstantiated), many apply as US citizens (brought up abroad going to international schools).
I wondered when this house of cards was going to fall (like the Singer scandal). What interests me is not the political aspect but the ability to self publish papers in this Malaysian based proclaimed hub of international journals.
Watching this!
One more thing. The other co-authors of the plagiarized article are not yet in college and their names and high schools are there for all to see. The Penn students are not from the same Bay Area public school as the others, but all the listed writers are from Bay Area high schools.
I would be curious to see who their college consultant is, and also what CC posters from the area think?
U/momfromca and u/sushiritto, care to opine? Is this the product of unscrupulous consultants?
Does it really matter if it’s politically motivated or not? The bottom line is if they cheated, they should not attend.
Maybe there are numerous international students who cheat but fly under the radar and these kids just happened to get caught. I’m not sure how they monitor these cases unless it’s through a whistleblower.
Unfortunately for them, they may have gotten in without cheating just through their connections.
I believe they’re domestic students with some international connection.
Attended California public schools.
This is so interesting. I can see the case both ways - 1) obviously plagiarism no good and if used to support app clearly unacceptable 2) but is UPenn to investigate every allegation? Could open up the floodgates.
If I were Penn admin, would definitely expel if papers were used to support apps. In addition, send a letter to the high school counseling office of the other plagiarizing students who are not yet in college.
This would (I hope) compel these private admissions counselors to be ethical. I doubt the kids came up with this themselves.
If I’m googling the correct high school for the Choi’s, then I’m not familiar with that “territory.”
Now OTOH, the Singer/Varsity Blues scandal hit fairly “close to home.”
Gotcha. You are socal!