Having your essay Custom-Written by Oxbridge Experts

Isaiah Berlin

An 80 average in a collection is very, very impressive. I think I'd struggle to get an 80 if I wrote the questions in advance of the paper!

I've got an Engineer friend at Oxford who got an 86 and 93 for his most recent collections a few weeks ago...brilliant!

Reply 42

Manatee

Nutter

I've got an Engineer friend at Oxford who got an 86 and 93 for his most recent collections a few weeks ago...brilliant!

That's extremely impressive, although I do think that sort of result would be much more difficult to get in an essay-based subject, simply because of the way they are marked.

The system does seem a bit counter-intuitive. Yesterday I sat an Ancient Egyptian language exam in which it should be perfectly possible to get 100% (as long as you get all your translations absolutely spot on). However, that sort of mark is just not attainable in "pure" history exams - I would be pretty happy if I got 70%+ in those. So, in theory, you could increase your chances of getting a first by dropping history modules in favour of language ones... Seems a bit odd.

Reply 43

anycon

11

More like 15-20 hours reading and a couple of hours to write it.

15-20 hours writing and couple of hours reading for me. (I'd say 3 hours procrastinating on the internet for every one hour actually typing into a document.)

Reply 44

000111

gotta love their pleading ignorance

oxbridgeessays.com

We will never know what happens to your essay after it leaves our computers.

"we have absolutely no idea what you could possibly be purchasing our essays for!!" - classic stuff

Reply 45

Buying an essay off these sitesand submitting it is a very dangerous game to play. For one, you run the risk of getting disqualified if even 3/4 lines have been plagiarised. The worst thing about it is that you wouldn't even know which lines have been plagiarised,or if there had been any plagiarsm at all. All these sites say they run they run the strictest tests to ensure all work is original but how would you know, unless you've done the research yourself.
Forget moral duty, the fear of disqualification alone would put me off buying off these sites.

Reply 46

President_Ben

UCL sent round an email to all students and staff a little while back regarding this lot.

Apparently, they are in touch with the police about them being an unlawful business that appears to encourage or facilitate fraud while repeating that 'plagiarism = disqualified'

Reply 47

Nutter

poohbear

I have been told that copying THREE WORDS without giving appropriate references and inserting the words in quotations marks can be considered plagiarism under the right circumstances.

Those circumstances are going to have to be very stringent (almost never invoked), because the likelihood that any 3 random words you type matches the exact phrase found elsewhere is, I dare say, provided your phrase makes sense, 100%. Either that, or your source is wrong.

Reply 48

Cexy

Surely this is old news? There was a site called Essay Bank providing A Level and GCSE essays a long time ago - although their essays were from a stock pool, rather than custom written.

It was run by a guy in my college, who made quite a tidy profit from it if I remember correctly.

Edit: In fact, this site advertises on TSR! It charges £15 per year for access to over 15,000 stock essays. I don't know what guarantees it makes about quality, though - and I suppose that all it would take would be for one university to pay for a subscription and circulate the essays to everybody else, where they could be incorporated into a database which would scan for plagiarism.

Reply 49

AlphaNumeric

10

Cexy

Edit: In fact, this site advertises on TSR!

Just flicking through the maths ones half of them are GCSE coursework or things you might do in 1st year.

Correlations between shoe size and height? Sounds like somethign you do in Yr 9, not undergraduate! Physics is a bit better but in many cases seem to be not much more thasn A Level or respouting of populat science books (in the case of the black hole and QM essays).

Reply 50

Da Bachtopus

12

poohbear

I have been told that copying THREE WORDS without giving appropriate references and inserting the words in quotations marks can be considered plagiarism under the right circumstances.

Consider what has happened to Kaavya Viswanathan, the author of "“How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life” . She has lost a half million US dollar advance, a two book contract, a contract for a movie with Dreamworks and has to leave her place at Harvard because of plagiarism.

It's clear she copied more than three words here and there, no?

Reply 51

Some of her paragraphs were similar in expression to some of the other slopppy books that were out there and it is true that only very few words were outrightly plagiarised. The publishers though didn't notice and it was only those sad hardcore fans that drew similarities between Opal Mehta and the other wastes of paper and ink out there.

It is unfair of her to lose her place at Harvard as its not like she was plagiarising an essay or something, what she did plagiarise it could be said was totally unrelated to her undergraduate studies.

If you want to plagiarise do it well and do it from a masterpiece not the bloody princess diaries.

Reply 52

Indeed, after reading the wikipedia article there is an uncanny resemblance in imagery, sentence structure, and paragraph organization between Opal Mehta and all the other books. Shame on her! Although if i decided to write a book it is inevitable that some wise and wonderful words lurking in my sub-conscience written by others who i have since forgotten would creep in. And I would think such words were my own and born out of the workings of my own mind. My book would not be able to stand up to the scrutiny Vishnawathan's book has been subjected too. Thus, I think her plagiarism was unintended and inadvertant.

Reply 53

Manatee

Epicurus

Indeed, after reading the wikipedia article there is an uncanny resemblance in imagery, sentence structure, and paragraph organization between Opal Mehta and all the other books. Shame on her! Although if i decided to write a book it is inevitable that some wise and wonderful words lurking in my sub-conscience written by others who i have since forgotten would creep in. And I would think such words were my own and born out of the workings of my own mind. My book would not be able to stand up to the scrutiny Vishnawathan's book has been subjected too. Thus, I think her plagiarism was unintended and inadvertant.

Having read those examples myself, I disagree. While I understand that it is impossible to avoid the influence of other books one has read in the past, the similarities in structure, vocabulary and other details are too close to be accidental: "170 specialty shops"? The only way she could have remembered all those passages from other books would be if she had an exceptional (perhaps photographic) memory - and if that was the case, she would surely remember where those passages came from.

I had some sympathy for the girl until I saw the extent to which her book resembled others, and I think that the accusation of plagiarism in her case is well founded. It's clear that this is the view taken by Harvard, and I think that they are justified in asking her to leave - what she did was dishonest and unethical, even though her book had nothing to do with her studies.

What I don't understand is why a clearly intelligent person would have run the risk of plagiarism in the first place, especially in a book which would inevitably be subjected to far more scrutiny than an undergraduate essay. Silly girl.

Reply 54

Manatee i now after having read the article and not under the influence of drink i have to concur that what she did was shamelessly blatant and i don't know what got into me to conclude otherwise.

Reply 55

Manatee

Epicurus

Manatee i now after having read the article and not under the influence of drink i have to concur that what she did was shamelessly blatant and i don't know what got into me to conclude otherwise.

Don't worry, alcohol can have that effect... Perhaps she wrote the book under the influence? :biggrin:

Reply 56

Adhsur