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.

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