<p>Oh gee, this is a discussion board. I was just making what I think was a cynical remark. I have been reading this SAT board for a while and I have heard so many stories about cheating and it seems nothing much were done. I am just as appalled as all of you, so please. If there were some consequences, great, maybe we can get less cheating in the future.</p>
<p>Looks like those kids applied to party schools (Tulane and ASU). If they kept their habits up, they would either fail out or spend tens of thousands more for other students to write their exams.</p>
<p>Either way they will be unsuccessful in the long run…</p>
<p>Soooo even if you are able to cheat on the SAT/ACT, get scores you woulnd’t be able to acheive on your own and it perhaps gets you an offer to a school you might otherwise not have the credentials for, exactly what happens when you start taking classes and perhaps find you are way over your head and can’t keep up??? Do you hire others to also cheat on your college exams or where does this end?</p>
<p>Perhaps those who hire someone to cheat on their SAT/ACT haven’t thought that far ahead.</p>
<p>It is sooo much harder to get into any college or university than it is to stay in.</p>
<p>Concrete steps should be taken to eradicate all these activities.</p>
<p>The SAT is just a money making scheme anyway… Just get rid of the test altogether and none of this would be news. Really people, tests are a bogus way of judging a persons knowledge of a subject. Come to think about it…Subjects are bogus too! Can anyone say…Steve Jobs was a dropout?</p>
<p>This could also be because of the immense pressure to succeed in these high achieving schools. By junior year everyone, even the good hard working kids go crazy because there is no guidance or specific format for college admissions. The whole process is opaque which increases the tension among kids. I am not justifying cheating but along with punishing these kids the schools and colleges should also provide a more fair learning environment for kids.</p>
<p>In any elite college they accept only 50% of the students who could have joined and been successful at this college. And so it is quite possible that you were smarter than another kid who got in but your SAT scores were off by a few points. So adults should look into the whole admissions process to see why this is happening. Guidance counselors should be more caring and concerned and try their best to get the students into their college of choice. My Ds go to a high achieving school district where the guidance counselor won’t even discuss college admissions with you till end of Junior year by which time it is too late. They just make their lives easier by pointing you to the easiest college you can get into and if you complain your are an overachiever or pushy parent!</p>
<p>I live in the town next to Great Neck. Apparently the girl had a name that was not gender specific. The large majority of the Great Neck population (especially Great Neck North) is Persian, so if it was an ethnic Persian name, it would be difficult to discern gender.</p>
<p>As for the money, coming from this area, the mean salary may be $89,000, but that is only because there are tiny areas around the towns near here where people make close to nothing that factors into that mean. The people who would do something like this (the majority of the high school kids) have a lot more than $100,000 a year family salaries. Most are a looooooot more than that. So either they got the money over a period of time without too much diifculty…</p>
<p>OR… more likely, coming from this area, the parents were in on it. Where we live, it’s not IF you go to college, but WHERE you go. Parents do ANYTHING around here for kids to get into good schools and/or get scholarships.</p>
<p>Funny how he did not make the girl pay.</p>
<p>Wow, badass! Wonder how much he charged for his services! :D</p>
<p>^mhc48 Could not agree more!</p>
<p>Apparently four mour students will be arrested this week regarding this same ring of cheaters, says the news.</p>
<p>I’m a bit curious as to how the cheating was detected - I’d guess the only reason this was discovered was that someone around the students reported them - it just seems very unlikely that ETS could have detected this.</p>
<p>That is, an administrator at the students’ home school saw the discrepancy between the reported test score, and their own knowledge of the student’s capabilities, and reported their suspicions to the ETS, or perhaps more likely, one of the students admitted to someone else how they achieved their score, and that person reported the admission of cheating to ETS. </p>
<p>As it stands, I don’t think it takes much imagination to see the vulnerabilities in the security of the testing procedure - there are simply too many students taking the test on a single day, at a single test center, to implement the more rigorous controls you find in licensing or graduate-level aptitude exams, like the MCAT/LSAT. </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m pretty certain we’re soon to be treated to a chorus of news articles that don’t blame the cheaters for cheating, but instead, will blame the “system” for “driving” them to cheat, about the inhuman pressures placed on students to get the grades, to get the SAT scores, to get into the “right” college, and isn’t it all so sad?</p>
<p>More cheating–both SAT & ACT! 35 have been named & arrested. Former FBI employee is investigating.</p>
<p>[SAT</a> Cheating Inquiry Widens, and Spreads to the ACT - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/cheating-2/]SAT”>http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/cheating-2/)</p>
<p>Think about it like this. Is it fair that some kids are genetically smarter than others? For example, I, myself, have devoted hundreds of ours studying for the ACT and took it 4 times, only to receive 27. Meanwhile, my friend who spent literally no time studying for it whatsoever–even playing video games until 2AM the night before-- scored a 34 his first time. Can you really blame these kids when there’s so much pressure on them today?</p>
<p>To be honest, I would’ve taken a chance like that if it mean there’s was no possibility of getting caught. I obviously didn’t though, and my test scores reflect that. </p>
<p>CC kids here are overachievers as well, so don’t bother giving me that apathetic “Oh, well. Life isn’t always fair. Deal with it. Get over it. etc etc etc…” response. When you’re already better than the rest, you don’t care about everyone else below you.</p>
<p>Yes, I blame people who decide to take a shortcut and try to game the system. You asked and I said it. The kids I know who just happen to do well on tests love reading and have read all their lives, as soon as they could hold a book. That is why they didn’t have to study or cram–these tests are NOT designed to do well with cramming any.</p>
<p>Pressure is a poor reason for deciding to do something illegal–when does it stop? If breaking one or two laws works for this, what about a few more? Plaugarism because it’s easier than doing original work? Cheating in class or projects because the course is too hard & competition too great? Lying on resume & application because that’s tough as well. Taking credit for someone else’s work? </p>
<p>Excuses won’t make anyone smarter and is just an attempt to assuage a guilty conscience.</p>
<p>
My friends isn’t the type of person who reads all of his life. There are plenty of people like him. I didn’t cram for these tests either. In fact, I spent several weeks, if not months, preparing for them. Don’t try to assume anything.</p>
<p>Yes, there is a good deal of pressure to do well on these tests, but there really does not have to be. There are plenty of test optional colleges out there, including Loyola Maryland and Bowdoin (if I’m correct?) $2500 is a lot to pay for a good score, though not unreasonable considering that many courses cost up to $1500. In my opinion? Students should focus less on studying for these tests, and more on their GPA’s. GPA is an indicator of past achievement, and SAT/ACT is an indicator of intelligence and potential for success. If a student cannot obtain a high enough SAT score to gain admittance into the school of their choice, then they should probably be focusing on a less selective school, where class difficulty will better meet their aptitude.</p>
<p>I can understand why the students cheated, and I can see how easy it would be to do so. It’s hard to create new policies, like fingerprinting, to prevent cheating when it would mean charging more just to ensure that a dozen kids a year do not succeed in cheating. Rather, I think that students should be required to take these tests at their own high school. Assign proctors that know every student in their room, and have them check many times to be certain that they are filling out their answer key for the correct person. Fake ID’s are extremely easy to obtain, and teachers are not adequately trained to spot fakes, so IDing students is not enough to prevent cheating. Or maybe testing companies could verify signatures (on the back of the answer sheet, where the student says that they did not cheat) with previously submitted signatures? Since I’m sure all of these students took the SAT once before attempting to cheat, with a signature rule, they would have to have a signature on file. Though, this would make purely online registration impossible. It is quite difficult to prevent against identity fraud when both parties mutually consent to it.</p>