<p>due to the increasing use of plagerism and more students applying online...wouldn't it be so easy for colleges to use a system like turnitin which checks for plagerism throughout the internet for the college apps...are they using this already?</p>
<p>plagerism on personal essays? and i don't think colleges would trust that, what if it crashes? it will be chaotic! and there is no need!</p>
<p>^ newby, there are entire businesses dedicated to providing essays (at a cost) to students for their college applications. im not even joking. highly risky and unethical and unallowed, but all the same, they are there.</p>
<p>i think turnitin.com is actually a really good idea</p>
<p>so what if they copy an essay? so what if they cheated? they can't get away with it in college, they are going to get caught! and then thrown out with years of tuition $$ going to the colleges! i don't see why colleges would want to stop getting their $$</p>
<p>uh, because when they are accepted, they are taking another deserving student's spot.</p>
<p>not only.. having a plagarist, or many, tarnishes the university's reputation. and lollipop's right.. it's not like they cant find some other person to fill the spot and pay the same $$</p>
<p>I hate to dig up a year-old topic, but I want to add a point in case someone else runs a search for turnitin.com on this website.</p>
<p>If you were to write an essay that was submitted to turnitin.com (say, for a class) and then submit it to a college, and the college was to run a check on it, it would come up as 100% plagiarized. Edit it and improve it and you'd probably still come up with 85%+ plagiarized, which probably looks even worse.</p>
<p>I like turnitin.com... I really like it for use at the high school level, but it seems almost out of place anywhere else. As bigmrpig stated, there are some problems that can arise.</p>
<p>Some colleges use it...</p>
<p>I don't think colleges use it for admissions; for classes, probably yes.</p>
<p>During admissions, if you used an essay for more than one college, then they'd appear as 100% matches between the different colleges.</p>
<p>Besides, I don't think personal statements are usually plagiarized. You're asked to talk about yourself in some way, and not, for instance, write an analysis of Hamlet, the likes of which there are probably thousands of essays about floating around in the internet. There -is- the problem of others writing the essay for you, but Turnitin will not find this, since what is written may not be the applicant's writing, but still original writing nonetheless. I think admissions officers are well-trained enough to figure out if a personal statement is not of the college candidate's voice.</p>
<p>As for class assignments, plenty of colleges do already use Turnitin to catch cheaters.</p>
<p>In my opinion, getting someone else to write the essay for you or buying it is only working at your own disadvantage. After all, who knows you best? You do. The essay should be purely your creation and if you get into a school off of a plagerized essay then you should feel like they admitted the person that wrote the essay, not you. </p>
<p>Just my opinion. I don't trust sites like turnitin.com. Last year we used mydropbox, another similar site and I often had original papers stated as plagerized. I don't think that they are really dependable enough yet.</p>