1. Countrywide Similarity Report Results | Compiled By Jeff Lorton, January 2010 Page 1 of 4
Plagiarism has long been a problem in student writing at the high school and university levels. A recent analysis
indicates that unoriginal content may also be a widespread problem in college and university admissions. The
analysis compared a large number of actual applicant personal statements to pre-existing sources and found a
high incidence of matching content, suggesting probable violations of application standards.
This report presents the results of a comparison of 452,964 personal statements collected during the 2006-2007
admissions cycle from an application service that receives approximately 500,000 applications per year. They
provide online application services to all institutions of higher education (over 300 in 2007) in a large English-
should be examined for possible plagiarism. The comparison was performed using a beta version of Turnitin for
Admissions to compare every document to our database that contained:
All student documents previously submitted to Turnitin throughout the world.
Proprietary content from global publishers, aggregators and syndicators worldwide including newswires,
newspapers, periodicals, journals, magazines, e-books, reference encyclopedias and academic textbooks.
Every document added to the beta Turnitin for Admissions database that preceded the report being generated
Results
There were 1,033,813 matches detected in 199,963 personal statements. The matches were found in the
following sources:
49% of the matches came from Internet sources (see the list of the top 100 matched sites at the end
of this document).
29% of the matches came from Turnitin academic student documents.
2% of the matches came from proprietary subscription content.
20% of the matches came from the Turnitin for Admissions document database (i.e., the pool of
applicant statements submitted in the test).
the results of the complete comparison and found “a few things to note. The text-matched percentages remained
roughly the same, except that matches found in the Turnitin for Admissions document database increased (by
entered the pool of admissions documents. This demonstrates the increased value of the admissions document
database as it grows in size or use over time.”
Countrywide Similarity
Report Results
Half-million Applicants’ Personal Statements Analyzed for Unoriginal Content
2. Countrywide Similarity Report Results | Compiled By Jeff Lorton, January 2010 Page 2 of 4
In other words, extremely relevant matches with admissions documents increased with the growth of the Turnitin
for Admissions database. Fewer matches with the Turnitin academic database followed that increase. The
assumption is that purchased personal statements matched parts of documents that had been previously sold
to or obtained by applicants.
Suspected Plagiarism, Collusion, Recycled or Purchased Documents
44% of the personal statements contained matching text
Conclusion
contain references or share text with other documents. Personal statements attached to applications should be
the work of that applicant and help the institution know more about the applicant. It is therefore safe to assume
work. The number of Internet sites that matched personal statement/ essay providing services leads one to ques-
tion the additional 130,000 applicants whose personal statement contained a match (they may have borrowed
or purchased all or part of their personal statement). It should be noted that iParadigms’ matching technology is
we believe that the problem may be even worse than it appears; if a larger database of Turnitin for Admissions
documents had been available for this test (like our current Turnitin academic database, which contains over
Internet Matches
or archived websites. The following are the top 100 web addresses, along with the number of matches found at
each site. Note that this list is corrected for the domain mirroring, i.e., www.essayedge.com and essayedge.com
are the same domain. This list of 92 addresses includes the mirrored sites combined so that this list of most often
sites matched is slightly over 100 web addresses.
Number of
Matches Web Source URL
37587 www.personalstatement.info
15170 www.studential.com
8775 www.azete.com
6327 learningat.ke7.org.uk
3777 www.youngchina.cn
3589 www.qpcs.brent.sch.uk
3313 en.wikipedia.org
2910 essayedge.com
2806 www.getintouni.com
Number of
Matches
Web Source URL
2123 www.youngchina.net
1940 socialworkers.dir.cc
1672 www.studentdiscussion.co.uk
1532 www.essaybank.co.uk
1455 essaypoint.com
1366 www.123helpme.com
1126 www.woopidoo.com
1059 www.brainyquote.com
1008 owl.english.purdue.edu
4. Countrywide Similarity Report Results | Compiled By Jeff Lorton, January 2010 (0414.10) Page 4 of 4
All products and services mentioned in this document are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Reporting Performance
The total of 452,964 reports, submitted one after another, took 70 hours, 07 minutes and 14 seconds to complete,
giving a generation rate of 107 reports per minute. Each report took an average of 38 seconds to generate.
Background
Eleven years ago, a group of researchers, teachers, mathematicians and computer programmers collaborated to
technology quickly found favor among educators looking for an effective method of plagiarism prevention, as well
This work eventually spawned Turnitin, a comprehensive technology that reached beyond just originality check-
ing and focused on enhancing the complete writing cycle. Today, Turnitin is used in more than 10,000 academic
institutions in 10 languages across the globe.
The growing popularity of Turnitin prompted inquiries from organizations outside of, or on the periphery of the
academic arena. It was immediately clear that any organization that creates content for publication, or solicits
In 2003, iThenticate, a professional version of Turnitin, was launched and immediately garnered interest from
In December 2009, following requests by many admissions professionals, Turnitin for Admissions® was launched.
After initial uses at a state university and an Ivy League residency program, it was clear that a service designed
Contact Information
Please direct inquiries about this report or about Turnitin for Admissions to:
iParadigms, LLC - developers of Turnitin for Admissions
direct +1-510-764-7616 main +1-510-764-7600
jlorton@turnitin.com Twitter @turnitinadm
www.turnitinadmissions.com
