The Student Room Group

my personal statement was flagged for detecting similarities and i dont know what to

all my teachers loved my personal statement were happy for me to submit it but I now have received an email from UCAS saying they detected similarities specifically in a paragraph about a book and article I read. This completely confused me as I wrote that paragraph in yr 12 (2019) until realised that an old friend who is now in uni studying the same subject as me, had asked to look at my first draft as she was running out of time to submit. It was my reading but since she applied last year it looks like I was plagiarising what do I do and how seriously do uni's take the detection
- a crying girl with no plan b
After 3 emails to ucas, escalating my problems with them, I got to talk to someone who helped me. (Wasn’t PS related)
You could email them exactly your above text, and then phone and ask if they’ve read your email and “how can we solve this together”
Original post by LuigiMario
After 3 emails to ucas, escalating my problems with them, I got to talk to someone who helped me. (Wasn’t PS related)
You could email them exactly your above text, and then phone and ask if they’ve read your email and “how can we solve this together”

That doesn't sound like good advice. If you've been accused of similarities/plagerism then you respond formally as instructed, Walking into a plagerism meeting and saying 'I hope we can solve this together' is the sort of thing Borat would say for a laugh IMO, not to mention the self incrimination.
UCAS will not accept any amendments to an applicant’s personal statement after the application has been submitted. We advise applicants to contact their course providers directly if they have any additional information which they wish to be considered.

From: https://www.ucas.com/file/253631/download?token=FGPIwCIx

Also:

Does this mean that my application is now cancelled?
No, the similarity detection alert does not affect the ongoing processing of your application. Please contact your choices directly for advice about your personal statement and the progress of your application.

I don’t think this is right how do I appeal?
Once a similarity detection report has been generated and your chosen choices notified, it cannot be removed, and there is no subsequent appeal process. You should contact your choices for further advice about your personal statement and provide any further information directly to them.

From: https://www.ucas.com/file/310676/download?token=iuNOyuBU

In short, there's not much you can do really I'm afraid, but it doesn't automatically mean you'll get rejections - the unis will decide what to do with the information. You can look at the report and see what it says
Reply 4
Original post by Interrobang
UCAS will not accept any amendments to an applicant’s personal statement after the application has been submitted. We advise applicants to contact their course providers directly if they have any additional information which they wish to be considered.

From: https://www.ucas.com/file/253631/download?token=FGPIwCIx

Also:

Does this mean that my application is now cancelled?
No, the similarity detection alert does not affect the ongoing processing of your application. Please contact your choices directly for advice about your personal statement and the progress of your application.

I don’t think this is right how do I appeal?
Once a similarity detection report has been generated and your chosen choices notified, it cannot be removed, and there is no subsequent appeal process. You should contact your choices for further advice about your personal statement and provide any further information directly to them.

From: https://www.ucas.com/file/310676/download?token=iuNOyuBU

In short, there's not much you can do really I'm afraid, but it doesn't automatically mean you'll get rejections - the unis will decide what to do with the information. You can look at the report and see what it says

so should I be contacting anybody or should I just be hoping for the best at this point
Reply 5
Firstly, if you get disqualified this year, it's not the end of the world. You're so freaking young.. I'm 30 and applying to medicine for next year. You got a long time with loads of choices for the future..they may not be first choice but they're not end of the world.
In terms of what you can do now, just wait it out and when the time comes tell it how it is. Be truthful in what happened. You can email unis but at this stage, they'll probably send something generic like "we're investigating right now and will be in contact soon".
Don't be too down, everything always falls into place. Hope it goes well for you.
Original post by shairox
so should I be contacting anybody or should I just be hoping for the best at this point

You just need to wait and see at this stage, but try not to panic as this doesn’t mean that your app will be rejected automatically.

If UCAS are satisfied that there is some element of plagiarism, (ie. you haven’t just used the same statement yourself in different cycles), then they will contact your choices. They’ll give them an approximate % or how much is possibly sourced from elsewhere.

From there, it’s up to each Uni to decide how to respond. They may not care at all, they may contact you to ask for an explanation. They will all make a fair decision based in the info they’ve got, nothing will happen automatically without a human being having a good look.
Definitely contact UCAS about it and ask who you should contact after that - you might have to wait a while because i’m pretty sure they don’t work on weekends. Unfortunately, some universities may not take your explanation into consideration and just reject you - but i’m not 100% sure. Good luck and sorry this happened to you :frown:
Also, i recommend contacting them via Facebook because they respond really quickly!

Quick Reply

Latest