University admissions officers may have been amused and impressed with the bright young spark who began his medical school application with an entertaining yet thoughtful anecdote about setting fire to his pyjamas when he was a boy.

But that was before they read 233 other applications telling exactly the same story.

They may experienced a similar sense of déjà vu when they read all 370 applications from would-be doctors who opened their personal statements with “a fascination for how the human body works . . .” and the 175 who referred to their “elderly or infirm grandfather”.

A creative imagination may not be the first thing universities were looking for from our future GPs, dentists or brain surgeons, but they might reasonably expect applicants to tell the truth.

But a survey of 50,000 applications, many for places on medical sciences courses and at Oxbridge, found that a significant minority of students had resorted to plagiarism when writing the personal statements that are designed to shed light on them as individuals.

Five per cent of applicants, equivalent to 25,000 of this year’s 500,000 total, resorted to cutting and pasting sentences from model personal statements from the internet this year, according to the survey by Ucas, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. Unfortunately, most lifted material from the same web-site, studential.com, making their transgressions as easy to spot as an elephant in an elevator.

Studential makes it abundantly clear that students should not copy “chunks” from the model statements on its site, adding that “ripping off somebody’s work” is “just nasty” and could cost applicants their place.

But with ten per cent of students now achieving straight As at A level, and with universities increasingly relying on personal statements to identify the best possible candidates, the application process has become highly pressurised for sixth-formers and the temptation to embellish personal statements with a little help from the internet is high.

The fact that almost all application forms are now completed online makes temptation that much harder to resist. Tellingly, the number of plagiarised applications increases as the deadline for completing the forms grows closer, Ucas has discovered.

Plagiarised material is most likely to appear at the beginning and end of personal statements, where students are most keen to grab attention.

The rise of the internet has already sparked concern that teenagers are cutting and pasting material for GCSE, A-level or degree coursework, but this is the first time the extent of application plagiarism has been revealed. Ucas said it had seen a rise in fraudulent applications, where individuals from abroad attempt to use an interest in attending university as a way to get into Britain. They then disappear on arrival.

Ucas, which uses a software programme called CopyCatch to detect material copied from the internet, said it was doubling its team of investigators of fraudulent applications from abroad and plagiarised personal statements.

A spokesman said that five per cent was a low proportion. He added that applicants were unlikely to be denied places on the sole grounds that they had plagiarised material in their personal statement. He added, however, that students who did “borrow” material from the internet could well be caught out at interview if asked to expand on their statements.

Steve Smith, a Ucas board member and vice-chancellor of Exeter, said that many students who committed plagiarism did not even realise that what they were doing was wrong.

Unwise words

“Ever since I accidentally burnt holes in my pyjamas after experimenting with a chemistry set on my 8th birthday, I have always had a passion for science”

“From an early age I have been fascinated by the workings of life. The human body is a remarkable machine”

“Living with my 100-year-old grandfather has allowed me to appreciate the frailties of the human body. When he had prostatitis, I went with him to hospital”

Advice from studential.com

“Don’t copy chunks from them or plagiarise them directly. Apart from possibly losing your place at university, it’s just nasty. If you are having problems writing yours, use the personal statement guide rather than ripping of somebody else’s work”

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