Is a 23% Turnitin Score Bad?

Is a 23% Turnitin score bad? It was 22% before but it went up by 1% a few hours later. Normally, when I submit an academic assignment it's always in the late tens or early 20s, and I truly wouldn't be worried if the assignment was a thousand words or over, but the assignment only had to be 750 words long, which makes my turnitin score seem high.

Reply 1

blaztroid

10

To clarify is this the similarity score rating? I've not had a lot of experience with it but 23% does seem a little bit high compared to some of my scores. It depends on the type of work though, like for code you'll naturally get a higher score than you would for an essay of similar length because it's a lot more structured.

We've been told that they look at the distribution and check if it's bimodal, basically for any given task there will be a certain 'expected' similarity, and then anything significantly above that might get flagged. For this task it might be 10% or 20%, or whatever, but as long as you fall in the main bulk of student similarity scores, it should be fine.

I would recommend looking at what it's flagged as 'plagiarism' 'cause I've seen similarity scores of 10/15% just from phrases like "at the Large Hadron Collider" or "electrons and protons". Also citations often flag up, so check if that's causing issues.

Reply 2

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by Anonymous

Is a 23% Turnitin score bad? It was 22% before but it went up by 1% a few hours later. Normally, when I submit an academic assignment it's always in the late tens or early 20s, and I truly wouldn't be worried if the assignment was a thousand words or over, but the assignment only had to be 750 words long, which makes my turnitin score seem high.

The thing is they don't just look at the similarity % alone, they will look at what is actually highlighted. If most of what is highlighted are bibliography items or a cover sheet or similar then it's fine usually. If there are large chunks of the main body of the assignment highlighted AND these aren't properly referenced/cited, then there may be more of an issue.

(edited 4 months ago)

Original post by Anonymous #1

Is a 23% Turnitin score bad? It was 22% before but it went up by 1% a few hours later. Normally, when I submit an academic assignment it's always in the late tens or early 20s, and I truly wouldn't be worried if the assignment was a thousand words or over, but the assignment only had to be 750 words long, which makes my turnitin score seem high.

Hi!

I wouldn't worry too much! Turnitin is notoriously hard when judging essays. Normally at my uni, the lecturer puts out a top score of the Turnitin %s they will accept, so maybe you could ask around or double check to see if this is the case for you too.

If there isn't one or you are still concerned, emailing them is always an option and they might end up being really helpful in clarifying whether or not this is okay or giving you advice on what to do. I'd also look at what has been highlighted, normally for me Turnitin loves to highlight page numbers, references, quotes, bulletpoints and the word "and" if this is the case then that's just the system being annoying.

I hope you get it all sorted!

- Jessica
2nd year, Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence)