Live Chat: Admissions Essay Plagiarism

Carrie Marcinkevage discusses Smeal's recent discovery of plagiarism in dozens of MBA application essays and why it now checks every essay that's submitted

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Carrie Marcinkevage
MBA Program Admissions Director
Penn State

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After catching dozens of applicants who were plagiarizing admissions essays last year, Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business (Smeal Full-Time MBA Profile decided to take action. The school has now pumped up the screening process for application essays and set higher expectations for applicants.

Carrie Marcinkevage (screen name: CarrieAtSmeal), Smeal's admissions director, says the school is looking for principled leaders who have demonstrated integrity long before applying to business school. She discussed the school's new initiatives to combat plagiarism in admissions and fielded questions from Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Francesca Di Meglio (screen name: FrancescaBW) and the public at a recent chat event. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation:

FrancescaBW: What led to Penn State Smeal taking a stand against plagiarism in admissions?

CarrieAtSmeal: We had a significant incident with plagiarism last year, one that really concerned us. We had 29 cases of plagiarism in our admissions essays out of a pending 360 applications. While we were proud of how we handled it last year, we believe it's critical to educate [applicants and staff about it] and prevent it in the future. When we focus on "Principled Leadership" and creating the next generation of business leaders, it's critical that the growth process start on the way in, not after someone arrives.

FrancescaBW: How are you catching plagiarists?

CarrieAtSmeal: We realize that human effort is insufficient to address the issue consistently. So we are using a first-screening process through a software program (Turnitin for Admissions), where we identify text matches to an entire bank of online sources, basically the entire Internet, past and present. We have two staff reviews to clear and then further review [questionable] essays. No decision is made until after the second review.

We have a great suggestion [from a chat participant] of having someone write a sample essay while on site, rather than requiring it prior. I do love that idea. We, however, use the essays to decide whether or not to interview a candidate later.

tgoral: After having discovered the plagiarized essays, did you go back and review previously admitted student essays? I'm wondering whether you were able to discover other incidents of plagiarism.

CarrieAtSmeal: Indeed. We dropped everything else and immediately went back through all essays of those applicants who had been admitted, invited to interview, or were awaiting decisions. We did discover several who'd been invited to interview—those candidates were notified and not admitted. And we unfortunately found one who'd been admitted. That decision was rescinded.

BFW: What percentage of applications do you check for plagiarism?

CarrieAtSmeal: Starting this year, we review 100 percent of our applications. This gives us an accurate baseline of trends.

tgoral: How are your admission screeners trained to spot suspicious content?

CarrieAtSmeal: You've hit on exactly the concern we had. We didn't want our admissions team to approach the applications with suspicion, looking for plagiarism. We wanted them to be able to focus on finding great candidates. So the software screening allows that very consistent and completely objective first review. Any concerns are then reviewed solely based on the matching-content concerns. Only after that are they reviewed for overall admissions fit.