Caltech honor code

<p>I know the honor code is very important to the Caltech culture. However, when I think about taking a 4 hour test with no notes, and no milk, I'm amazed so many people have the discipline not to cheat.</p>

<p>If such a system were implemented in my high school, I guarantee more than 90% of the people would cheat in some way or another.</p>

<p>I guess I would not be so concerned with this if it did not affect me. But while I know the majority of techers are honest, I am worried that some cheaters may ruin the curve for a class, and affect everyone's grade negatively.</p>

<p>What is done to prevent this? Also, among your friend circles, how common is cheating?</p>

<p>Whoops, don't know what happened there: should be book instead of milk. :)</p>

<p>I've never personally known anyone who cheated. It's not really even discipline, I would imagine, that motivates people not to cheat here. It's that because the school is so cooperative, you know that if you were to cheat on an exam you'd be directly screwing over the friends you studied for it with, not to mention other techers. </p>

<p>I don't really know to explain it very well, but it just doesn't really worry me. I'm sure it happens, but probably pretty rarely. And in any case, I've never been in a class where I wasn't sure that the top scorers deserved their score.</p>

<p>I think any of the cheating is more among people towards the bottom of the class that are struggling to keep afloat than the people that are at the top of the class. I mean, I've had timed tests where I don't care how much time you gave me, I still wouldn't have been able to solve some of the problems.</p>

<p>I should point out since RacinReaver is chiming in that based on surveys we've given, undergrads tend to follow/believe in the honor code more than grad students (I think it is emphasized more for us).</p>

<p>EDIT: I say this although the point he made above most certainly applies to undergrads.</p>

<p>There's an essay on this topic. I think its the hardest essay question. Hard to write interestingly and all.</p>

<p>I don't think cheating is very common among the grad students, the only real rumors I hear are of students from certain countries that start with Chin and end with a vowel tend to keep a large database of all homework and tests and pass them from one student to the next. While I've certainly met some that are brilliant, there's a few I've known that I question how they manage to get 4.0s each term when they can barely speak the language.</p>

<p>I think according to a survey I saw in the school paper the rate of students admitting to cheating was something like 1/2 to 2/3 that of the national average, though. I will agree that cheating seems considerably less common here than I saw at my undergrad school.</p>