<p>
[quote]
UCAS research shows few applicants pay to plagiarise
7 March 2007</p>
<p>A study of 50,000 personal statements that form part of the UCAS application has shown that very few rely on plagiarised material.</p>
<p>5% of applications were found to have borrowed material from the internet with most from one free website. The research was carried out by CFL Software Development authors of the CopyCatch suite of detection programs, at the request of UCAS, following the October 15 deadline for Oxbridge, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science applications.</p>
<p>Almost 800 medical applications had personal statements containing phrases directly borrowed from three online example statements. Some elements of sentences were found to be remarkably common:</p>
<pre><code>*370 contained a statement starting with: "..,a fascination for how the human body works..."
*234 contained a statement relating a dramatic incident involving "...burning a hole in pyjamas at age eight..."
*175 contained a statement which involved "...an elderly or infirm grandfather..."
</code></pre>
<p>As the deadline approached the number of applications with borrowed material increased, but the amount of direct copying from web sources is very small indeed at less than 1%. Borrowed material is most likely to appear at the end of the statement or where an applicant describes why they want to study a subject.</p>
<p>Anthony McClaran, UCAS Chief Executive, said: "We are pleased to see that plagiarism is not rife in applications and that few applicants are paying to plagiarise. We take the integrity of applications very seriously and commissioned this work to investigate the potential for screening applications for borrowed material in the future. As part of our ongoing commitment to maintaining integrity standards we will shortly be doubling the size our Verification Unit which is responsible for identifying fraudulent applications".</p>
<p>In addition to identifying copied material from the internet, the study also examined whether there were similarities in applications from the same school. The research showed very little evidence of the sort of similarities that might arise, for example through the adoption of a school template for personal statements.</p>
<p>Press contact
Byron Price, Communications Executive
Tel: 01242 544987
Email: <a href="mailto:communications@ucas.ac.uk">communications@ucas.ac.uk</a>
Out of hours: 07768 740461
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I wasn't sure where to post this, or if this has already been posted. I thought it was interesting though.</p>