Online College Application Service Adds Plagiarism Detection

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 08/09/11

Two companies have partnered to add plagiarism checking to the higher education online application process. Hobsons, which sells the online application service EMT ApplyYourself, now includes Turnitin for Admissions from iParadigms. This fall, admission offices at undergraduate and graduate schools that use ApplyYourself will be able to verify applicant essays to discover potential plagiarism.

ApplyYourself includes multiple tools to guide students through the college admission process. In 2010, according to Hobsons, 550 admission offices used the service to process applications. Turnitin for Admissions compares submitted documents to a database of Internet content, student and applicant essays, subscription content, and other documents to create a "Similarity Report." This report provides a way for admissions people to verify and identify potential problems in application content.

Hobsons developers used Turnitin for Admissions application programming interface hooks to integrate the features of the plagiarism software into the admissions application, said Jeff Lorton, product and business development manager for Turnitin for Admissions. "In these tough economic times, every decision is based on the return on investment of the decision," he added. "With [these two services] integrated, clients will see higher success rates in their undergraduate and graduate programs. When the decision to admit applicants includes verified essays, admitted applicants are likely to be more successful and graduate."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • glowing digital brain made of blue circuitry hovers above multiple stylized clouds of interconnected network nodes against a dark, futuristic background

    Report: 85% of Organizations Are Using Some Form of AI

    Eighty-five percent of organizations today are leveraging some form of AI, according to the latest State of AI in the Cloud 2025 report from Wiz. While AI's role in innovation and disruption continues to expand, security vulnerabilities and governance challenges remain pressing concerns.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Launches Claude for Education

    Anthropic has announced a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

  • college building with a central domed rotunda, arched windows, and columns, overlaid with glowing blue circuit patterns

    Kishwaukee College Moves to Ellucian Colleague SaaS

    Illinois's Kishwaukee College is modernizing its administrative systems with an Ellucian Colleague SaaS rollout that will bring AI-powered tools to human resources, finance, and student management.

  • interconnected glowing nodes and circuits in blue and green, forming a neural network on a dark background with a futuristic design

    Tech Giants Launch $100 Billion AI Infrastructure Network Project

    OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle have unveiled a new venture, Stargate, through which they aim to build a massive AI infrastructure network across the United States. The initiative, which was announced at the White House with President Donald Trump, has been described as the "largest AI infrastructure project in history."