The Student Room Group

Personal Statement Plagiarism

So UCAS have equipment to detect plagiarism, but how does it work? Because I've been looking at some personal statements on the internet (after I'd finished mine), and a lot of the engineering degrees say quite similar stuff to mine about maths. One even has a very similar sentence talking about 'theories and concepts etc'. What if, COINCIDENTALLY, my PS had a VERY similar sentence to someone elses? I'm really worried because I've already sent it to my referee.

(I haven't plagiarized by the way).

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Reply 1
If it's not plagarized why worry? God knows how many personal statements UCAS recieves each year - there are bound to be similarities.
Reply 2
I wouldn't worry about it, most people put similar things in their PS accidentally
Reply 3
Just hypothetically though. Like if a sentence was EXACTLY the same (coincidentally of course). How good is this technology UCAS have? Good enough to ruin my dreams perhaps?
Reply 4
It'll just pick out sentences and match it against what it finds on the WWW in an algorithmic kind of way. As has been said, if you're not guilty, don't worry.
I would have thought unless huge reams of text matched, or lots of individual sentences were identical to others on the internet it wouldn't flag anything up :smile:
Reply 6
If it's flagged up as being similar they'll look at the sentence and whether it's complex, or likely to be coinciental.
Reply 7
It's probably gonna work like coursework - you'd need large chunks copied out for them to say it's plagiarised. That's just a guess though, I don't ACTUALLY know.
I'm sure out of the thousands of personal statements that are written every year, some must have sentences which are EXACTLY the same.

Aslong as you haven't actually plagiarised, don't worry! You will be fine.
Reply 9
I imagine that it's a scale of plagiarism. Swinging from 0-10 not "fail/passed test".
Last year there were apparently something like 200 medical applications that copied a story about how burning a hole into their pajamas with a home chemistry kit made them interested in science. Needless to say this was straightaway picked up and these people felt UCAS' wrath. Serves them right too!...but you should be ok if it's like one sentence.
Reply 11
Plagiarism isnt cool.
Someone3
Last year there were apparently something like 200 medical applications that copied a story about how burning a hole into their pajamas with a home chemistry kit made them interested in science.


lol this made me laugh :biggrin: ............

but yes i would suspect they would have a scale rather then a yes/no system tbh..........
Reply 13
A plagiarism FAQ will be coming to the UCAS website soon.

If you haven't cut and paste sentences from the web / a friend / authoring service / sibling / book then you will be fine.

Needless to say this was straightaway picked up and these people felt UCAS' wrath. Serves them right too!...but you should be ok if it's like one sentence.

No action was taken last year - as the Apply declaration did not mention any plagiarism detection. This year the declaration has been changed and help text states :

Make sure that your personal statement is your own work

We will, along with other verification checks for identity and academic qualifications, test applications to detect plagiarism. If we have cause to question your application, we will inform all the universities and colleges to which you have applied. They will then take the action they consider to be appropriate. We will also contact you by email.

Steve
what happens is that your statement is compared to a database of amazingness and given a rating. if it's flagged up as questionable, then a person will look at it and see if there's a reason for that ie. you've jus used a lot of cliches.... or if they need to investigate more. loads of them are really similar. but it doesn't search for content similarity, it's patterns in sentence structure that it picks up on.
SteveUCAS


No action was taken last year - as the Apply declaration did not mention any plagiarism detection.



Steve

How upsetting. :O
Reply 16
out of hours work there steve :rolleyes: Hope your being paid overtime lol.
Reply 17
what if you're reapplying? can u not use the same PS?
Reply 18
It isnt possible to plaguise yourself lol.
Reply 19
No - just back from playing poker and thought I would see if we are causing too many problems for you ;-)

I am leading on the technical implementation of UCAS' plagiarism detection solution and I am really hoping we don't find too many.

Please write your own - we have a good detection solution and I would prefer not to catch anyone.

Cheers and good luck with your applications.

Steve