What Are the Consequences of Plagiarism in College Applications?

Most students dream of joining a good college, and of course, it is their top priority. They are busy filling out applications, writing essays, and a statement of purpose, which can help them set themselves apart from tons of university applications. In this effort, several students try to cheat by copying content from the Internet, which will rob their chance of getting into a top college. The consequences of plagiarism in college applications are severe and colleges are in a better position at detecting it.

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How Does Plagiarism in College Applications Occur?

Educational institutions, especially colleges and universities receive a large number of applications from students. Are those applications free of plagiarism? It is true that students are desperate to get into one of the leading colleges in the world. When competition is fierce and the stakes high, they try different ways to have the winning statements in the application get shortlisted.

The students who are vulnerable try to use someone’s work or engage an essay mill to write on a topic of their interest. What makes students resort to unethical practices? When consequences of plagiarism are becoming more severe, and chances of detecting plagiarism are higher using the advanced tools, students are still accused of plagiarism as they keep taking the risk of doing it. Here are some reasons why plagiarism happens in college applications.

• Fear of Losing

Unlike the students in the past, the students today are under tremendous pressure of doing more. They are always under stress to score good grades to acquire scholarships, get admissions in a university, get a job or internship, and so on. For these, they need to write well to demonstrate their potential skills, which is difficult for many students. When they are not confident about their writing skills but are desperately looking for a high grade, they are induced to cheat, which leads to college application plagiarism. Students do not wish to cheat, but the fear of failure forces them to take a chance.

• Score Higher Grade

The other way round is most students want to score higher grades to join one of the best universities in the country or world. They think that their future depends on this, and spend most of the time thinking about scoring better. With parents joining them, they are emotionally challenged. All these make them take a risk of cheating or causing plagiarism.

How Can You Avoid It?

There are numerous ways to prevent plagiarism in university applications.

1. Students can be educated on what is plagiarism and the different types of plagiarism. When writing application essays, plagiarism occurs unintentionally owing to inadequate summarizing and paraphrasing, confusion regarding what is common knowledge, lack of understanding about citation styles and wrong conceptualizing of patch-writing.
2. They should learn how to paraphrase a text in their own words, understand what is quoting and summarizing.
3. Make proper notes when using a text from the original source, and provide appropriate citations according to the writing style.
4. They need to know to use quotation marks when using the original test and cite it properly.

Using a Plagiarism Checker

Students should be made aware of the use of advanced plagiarism checkers, which can detect any type of plagiarism in college application essays. The tool can scan and deliver the results in seconds. A plagiarism checker for universities can conduct in-depth scanning by checking an extensive range of external sources, as well as internal sources for any similar content.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology facilitates the easy detection of files in all Unicode languages. Other than this, it helps scan physical content using OCR technology. The grading tool helps score the application essays easily and effectively.

Consequences of Plagiarism in a College Application

If you are not true on your college applications, is it unlawful? There are no instances of students charged for such practices. Nevertheless, the consequences of plagiarism or cheating are not small. The college admission committee will reject applications if they find strong evidence of plagiarism in admission essays. Such an action is a warning for students to not fail in complying with the codes of conduct that affect academic integrity. Most educational institutions are spending a lot of time and energy steering clear of plagiarism in college admissions. Students are educated on the outcomes and new resources to help them avoid plagiarism.

By rejecting applications, the admission committee at the university dissuades students to carry the cheating or copying tendency to the campus. They claim that such students cannot uphold academic honesty, as well as adopt the ethical culture on campus. The severity of consequences does not end there, students responsible for cheating will face expulsion from college and destruction of reputation. They will be rejected by other institutions and may have to face any legal action for copyright infringement.

Sometimes, the original author will have to be compensated for breaking the copyright law. You should also be worried about being questioned by the college administration staff, where your academic qualifications, objectives, and dream are questioned. You lose your teachers’ faith and respect, which you gained through your academic effort and honesty. You cannot afford to lose it by an unethical act. It is found that students who have gotten away with plagiarism detection on their college essays may continue this form of misconduct on college campuses and later on the job. Thus, cheating on college applications through shortcuts may harm the ethical environment of the campus. As it grows to become endemic, it should be stopped at the gates itself.