Prevalence of programs like Turnitin

Applying to College
1

<p>so i read about this program, turnitin, for the first time the other day.</p>

<p>for those of you who know anything about it/similar programs, or just a whole lot about college admissions and that stuff, what sort of schools use such a program? how often is it used?</p>

<p>or is turnitin primarily used when you actually reach college, by individual teachers, since their amount of papers at one time would be significantly less than an entire college's during admissions?
i read somewhere that many colleges will make you aware of turnitin/a similar program, and have you sign something so that you know your work can be subjected to it.</p>

<p>when i was researching it online, i read that a lot of people have been protesting it, condemning it as an invasion of privacy... some schools now say that you have to agree to it before they'll use it on your work.</p>

<p>for example, my best friend's dad is a guidance counselor, and he said that some admissions reps have told him that kids just purchase essays from buyers, and then when admissions officers read them, they can notice the same essay from a previous year, purely from recollection. so i didn't understand if turnitin is sort of like a checker in the admissions process, that when an adcom is suspicious of an essay, s/he'll run it through their software thing... otherwise, if every essay was subjected to it (i can't imagine elite colleges with thousands and thousands of applicants waiting for every single essay to be scanned and checked), it would kinda seem like an invasion of privacy that wasn't based on any proof.</p>

<p>ha, sorry this was long.</p>

2

<p>My kids use it in high school (some) and college at the request of their teachers. They get some kind of confirmation (code?) that they put on their papers as proof to their teachers/prof's that it has been checked. No code = no grade.</p>

3

<p>I used it last year (junior year H.S.) to turn in a research paper. My teacher got it directly from the site. I didn't have to write any codes or anything. </p>

<p>The scanning isn't a long process at all. Plus, my teacher knew that some of the percentages (they give a percentage for the unoriginal part of the essay) are going to be screwy. It wasn't that bad.</p>

4

<p>My son uses it a lot in his 9th grade English class. All he does is submit the Word document online. His teacher gets a code, and he turns in the paper copy to the teacher. His school has had no problems with it.</p>