Turnitin, a software program that's used by colleges around the country to detect student plagiarism, is now a tool in the admissions process.
Larry Gordon of the LA Times reports that more than 100 college and university programs are now using the software to screen applicants' essays. UCLA's Anderson School of Management and Stanford University are among the schools doing so--and turning away applicants whose work is not their own, Gordon writes.
At UCLA's graduate school, plagiarism was discovered on a dozen of the 870 applications received this year. And since Penn State's Smeal College of Business started using the program, it's picked up plagiarism rates of between 3 and 5 percent, an admissions officer told the LA Times.
High schools and colleges have used Turnitin's database since the 1990s, and the company developed a version of the software for admissions essays two years ago, the LA Times reports.
And the use of Turnitin on applications for undergraduate programs could become a lot more widespread if the software is picked up by the Common Application, an online service used by nearly 500 colleges that's seriously considering implementing it, according to the LA Times.
