LSD PS Bank

[ruskiegirl]

This is percisely why we could set this up an accept ps contributions on a voluntary basis.  Those of you who have a very common theme, or one that is not easily proven to belong to you are not forced to submit.  However, if there are folks out here that are willing to share theirs, it could help out someone who doesn't have the 20 dollars to spend or may wish to communicate with the author of a statement for questions and pointers (assuming, of course, that the author has not chosen to remain anonymous and is willing to provide such assistance).

[Ginatio]

save them the $20? ha... i was actually thinking about legitamizing the idea a little bit by instituting a membership based website with a one time membership fee... also, by keeping it all centralized, we can make sure that adcoms know about it and thereby have a reference to cross-check any suspicious personal statements--without the original author having to worry about getting in trouble.

[The ZAPINATOR]

edit

[ruskiegirl]

save them the $20? ha... i was actually thinking about legitamizing the idea a little bit by instituting a membership based website with a one time membership fee... also, by keeping it all centralized, we can make sure that adcoms know about it and thereby have a reference to cross-check any suspicious personal statements--without the original author having to worry about getting in trouble.

That's definitely a working plan.  How would we notify adcoms of such a site?  And how do we detect/control suspicious activity?  (I don't think ad coms would take the time to visit a site to make such cross references).

[egfmba]

Sure they would!  With plagiarism at an all time high, they'd be better off having a resource to weed out cheaters now (rather than after admission).

There's already several document-bank-type websites out there that high schools and colleges are checking their students' work against; this wouldn't be any different.  You could also charge adcomms for access as well, since it would be an invaluable resource...

[ruskiegirl]

I think that the time available to an undergraduate instructor who is grading 30 papers differs significantly from that which is available to an ad com member, who is part of a small team that is assigned to scrutinize up 7,000 applications during a given admissions cycle.  I don't think they go go to the library/book store to check out/buy 40 Personal Statements or some other selection every time someone turns to them and says, "You know, Bob, this one looks suspicious.  We had an applicant last year who wrote about immigrating from China when he was 6."

[egfmba]

No.  What I'm talking about is a site called turnitin.com.  You submit the papers to the site, they compare and return to you reports that show how much of each paper was lifted from previously printed work.  All electronic.  No comparison on the part of the teacher/adcomm necessary.

Cool, huh?  Check it out yourself:

http://www.turnitin.com/static/home.html?session-id=097c9a129b3d27b79c1efa1deccc94da

[ruskiegirl]

I honestly don't think that ad coms have time to do this.  They are already overloaded.

[Ginatio]

we notify adcoms by sending an email to the admissions@____.edu for each institution informing them of it. if they choose to ignore it, then they do so at their own peril.

detection and control of suspicious activity wouldn't be up to us. it's the adcom's job to identify suspicious applications (i.e., applications where the ONLY bright spot is the personal statement might seem suspicious).

also, i remember seeing a dateline news special on detecting cheating in high schools where they showed an online repository of papers and resources that could be used by teachers to detect plagarism in student papers. they way it worked was that the teachers uploaded the suspicious papers to the website, which then did an automated search to find identical passages that matched up with their database. they would then send the marked up copy of the paper back to the teacher with copied passages highlighted and a score of "____ %" plagarized.

there may be open source code for something like this that could be easily implemented... just an idea for anyone that's truly interested in getting something like this off the ground

That's definitely a working plan.  How would we notify adcoms of such a site?  And how do we detect/control suspicious activity?  (I don't think ad coms would take the time to visit a site to make such cross references).

[ruskiegirl]

we notify adcoms by sending an email to the admissions@____.edu for each institution informing them of it. if they choose to ignore it, then they do so at their own peril.

detection and control of suspicious activity wouldn't be up to us. it's the adcom's job to identify suspicious applications (i.e., applications where the ONLY bright spot is the personal statement might seem suspicious).

also, i remember seeing a dateline news special on detecting cheating in high schools where they showed an online repository of papers and resources that could be used by teachers to detect plagarism in student papers. they way it worked was that the teachers uploaded the suspicious papers to the website, which then did an automated search to find identical passages that matched up with their database. they would then send the marked up copy of the paper back to the teacher with copied passages highlighted and a score of "____ %" plagarized.

there may be open source code for something like this that could be easily implemented... just an idea for anyone that's truly interested in getting something like this off the ground

That's definitely a working plan.  How would we notify adcoms of such a site?  And how do we detect/control suspicious activity?  (I don't think ad coms would take the time to visit a site to make such cross references).

Your planning skills are kinda sexy, Ginatio.   

Everything sounds good, except we need a webmaster.  Unless, of course, Andrew decided to add this as an area to the existing site.