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UCAS Plagiarism

I found this website https://www.ucas.com/file/253631/download?token=FGPIwCIx and it states "any statements showing a level of similarity of 30% or more are reviewed by members of the UCAS Verification Team". What does this part specifically mean?
Any personal statement which is 30% similar (1200 characters) to another personal statement will be manually reviewed by a person to check for plagiarism.
Original post by hungrysalamander
Any personal statement which is 30% similar (1200 characters) to another personal statement will be manually reviewed by a person to check for plagiarism.

So you need to make sure that your personal statement is under 30% similarity? Isn't that a lot for a personal statement to be copied from another personal statement?
Original post by DeItaReality
So you need to make sure that your personal statement is under 30% similarity? Isn't that a lot for a personal statement to be copied from another personal statement?

I don't understand what you're asking. If you write it yourself, it's really rare that it gets flagged, from my understanding. It might be basic phrases such as "I was inspired by" that flag. Unless you've copied a whole paragraph, I've never heard of it happening.
Original post by CatInTheCorner
I don't understand what you're asking. If you write it yourself, it's really rare that it gets flagged, from my understanding. It might be basic phrases such as "I was inspired by" that flag. Unless you've copied a whole paragraph, I've never heard of it happening.

What I'm trying to say is that any personal statement needs to be below 30% as that is what it says. The second thing that I said is that, isn't 30% of having similar things in your personal statement to another personal statement a lot to copy from?
Original post by DeItaReality
What I'm trying to say is that any personal statement needs to be below 30% as that is what it says. The second thing that I said is that, isn't 30% of having similar things in your personal statement to another personal statement a lot to copy from?

It is a high threshold, but there are a lot of standard phrases which many applicants will use, "for as long as I can remember", "my interest in XYZ first began", "thank you for your consideration", which need to be accounted for.

Bear in mind that even going over the 30% doesn't automatically do anything, it's reviewed by UCAS who then determine whether to report it to the applicant's choices. The choices then have final say with what to do with that information.

The short answer is, unless you've plagiarised substantially, it's not going to be an issue.

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