US President Joe Biden, poet TS Eliot and historian Stephen Ambrose have all been linked to plagiarism incidents.
Among them, Elliott's plagiarism was only discovered after his death, while President Biden and Ambrose were severely criticized by the public for plagiarism during their lifetimes. Plagiarism has had a serious negative impact on their reputations and careers.
Plagiarism in college application documents will not only affect students' normal admission, but may also have a serious negative impact on their lives. If found to have plagiarized, students who have not yet enrolled are likely to lose their qualifications for admission; students who have already enrolled will face the risk of being expelled; students who have graduated may even be deprived of their degrees. Plagiarism can have serious consequences throughout a student's life, as well as their family, school, and community.
Even if students think they are not plagiarizing from the source, they often do so unknowingly. Admissions officers at America’s elite universities don’t care whether an applicant plagiarized intentionally or unintentionally. As long as there is any suspicion of plagiarism, the application is destined to fail.
So, can we ask for help from others when writing our college application essays? The answer is yes.
Applicants who do not brainstorm essay topics with someone who understands college admissions rules and receive review and guidance from professionals will most likely be at a significant disadvantage in their application.
Novelists would not publish books without the help of editors; screenwriters would not see their scripts enter production without input from executives at production companies, studios, and media companies. Good works require constant modification and reshaping, which is the necessary process to create a good work.
But it should be noted that we are talking about human editors and human executives here, not artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT. We do not recommend using artificial intelligence for document writing. The use of ChatGPT has always been a "grey" area in American higher education, but most admissions officers hate it.
Using ChatGPT to help write study abroad documents may not only cause the quality of the documents to deteriorate and the content of the documents to become formulaic, but may also put the documents at risk of being detected by AI detection software. Admissions committees may use AI detection software to determine whether students' writing was completed independently.
Even if a student only uses ChatGPT or other forms of artificial intelligence during the brainstorming or outlining phase of the application essay, rather than during the writing process, it may cause the essay to become formulaic and follow-able from the outlining phase.
In front of admissions officers who have rich experience in admissions and excellent identification skills, it is almost impossible to try to get through with AI-assisted articles.
These admissions officers are exposed to applicants from all backgrounds and schools all year round. They review thousands or even tens of thousands of applications every year. They are very familiar with various writing styles and levels and can easily identify those who have not really thought about it. and articles with personal involvement.
They can easily detect the involvement of artificial intelligence, especially when they see an applicant's essay that is too mechanical, lacks originality, or is similar in content to other applicants.
In addition, most colleges and universities have robust resources, including advanced technology and software, for detecting plagiarism and other unfair practices. These software can detect the similarity between application documents and online resources or other student documents to determine whether there is plagiarism in the document; they can use professional algorithms to determine whether the document has traces of AI involvement.
Currently, The Common Application does not have software to detect AI built into its platform, but such software is already common in colleges and universities. For admissions officers who suspect that the essay may have been written with AI assistance, they only need to upload the essay to the AI detection software and easily obtain the test results in a few seconds.
Therefore, trying to get away with a plagiarized or AI-written college application essay is nearly impossible. Even if you really get through it, it will leave endless troubles. Applicants must not take chances and try to use plagiarism or AI to challenge the admissions officer’s IQ and experience.
What admissions officers want to see is your sincere opinions, true story, and unique personality, not pretense and deception...