I’m not in a frat, but I’m friends with a good number of frat guys and sorority girls on campus. Several of these Greek life members have good access to all the old exam solutions. A few departments in my university are known to reuse exam questions from previous years. Could I get in trouble for accessing old solutions for classes if the prof didn’t distribute them out to the whole class?
This is more a question for your school’s Honor Code than an anonymous board, but my rule of thumb is that if you have to ask, you probably shouldn’t do it.
You’d need to read the academic dishonesty policy for your university. It’ll usually say something about this. As well, check your syllabus for each class. You’ll find the academic dishonesty policy on there as well as the instructor’s views OCCASIONALLY. Not always, but sometimes.
It’s only cheating if the instructor or the academic dishonesty policy says so. Thus, you can ask if you’re ever worried. Many of my instructors would say they didn’t care if you had someone’s old exams to study. Again, find out from the instructor themself, the syllabus, and or your academic dishonesty policy.
I agree that you should check with your honor code, but I say that no, it’s not cheating. This is quite common in fraternities and sororities, the saving of old examinations. Professors who have a problem with it either 1) ask for their exams back after allowing students to look at them or 2) change their exams from year to year, at least slightly, so that you can’t memorize the answers. I would think that professors, especially at schools where there is a Greek system, have to be aware that people save their old exams and adjust accordingly.
I personally (as someone who teaches classes and who will, fingers crossed, be a professor next year!) wouldn’t have a problem with it, but that’s because even if I reused exam questions, I would change numbers and details so the answers weren’t exactly the same. Honestly, I would say it’s a perk allowed to those who took the initiative to find a way to study (and I would give out study materials anyway, soo…)
^wouldn’t it be different, though, if it’s studying from old exams or from old exams’ solutions?
And are the exams supposed to be the same year to year (ie., from a test bank) or different, but on the same model/with the same format?
The thing is, though, that I’m worried that asking the prof will do more harm than good and that I’ll automatically end up on his/her “watch-list.”
Look - I teach college, and though I do not explicitly say “don’t use solved old exams or old exam answer keys to study from”, it is clearly a violation of our university honor code.
You can do it, but it is REALLY risky.
A big BUT: BUT, any professor who reuses EXACT problems from previous year’s exams is not doing their job. So, some students argue that ethically, it’s not their problem that they are using old exams with answers, it is the professor’s problem if they are not changing the questions.
I always redo at least 80% of my exams, and for the other 20%, I change the numbers around significantly. Not only that, but the 20% that might be repeats are from many previous years, so it would not be helpful unless the student has the time and energy to go through ten previous semesters.
I do NOT agree with “it’s only cheating if the syllabus or honor code says so”. We don’t have explicit cheating examples in our honor code. It doesn’t say “if you write notes on the desk from your textbook, before books are closed for the exam, that is cheating”. But sure as heck it is cheating.
The spirit of the honor code is important. Hopefully your professors will mix it up enough that students who do have “extra help” will be done a disservice if all they did was look at old answers. But too often they don’t.
If it’s against the rules of your school’s academic integrity code or against your professor’s rules for the course, then yes, you could get in trouble for it. If the professor allowed old exams to be released in previous years, then they probably already know that those exams are floating around and that current students are going to find a way to access them. Most professors I know how do this release old exams for students to study from so that it’s fair to everyone or release problem sets that are very similar to old exam questions.
Perhaps, you could ask the professor to release old exams or to release a few sample problems from old exams. If s/he refuses to because it would be too similar to his/her current exam, then you have your answer. S/he doesn’t want you looking at old exams and you would probably get in trouble if you got caught. If s/he does release exams/problem sets, then not only do you have more resources to study from but your resources are approved by the professor as being helpful. Win/win.
I disagree with this if the only old exams that are available are those that are kept by sororities or fraternities. That’s not something that everyone has equal access to. You either have to be in the sorority or the fraternity (which would be an unfair requirement because these are exclusive organizations that do not accept everyone and you have to be able to pay dues to be a part of one) or be good friends with someone in a sorority or fraternity (which is also an unfair requirement when you’re talking about equal access to resources for a test). It’s not about taking initiative since not everyone is going to want to or going to know to become friends with someone in a sorority or fraternity just so they can have access to old exams.
If it was an old exam that was posted online, then that would be a different story. Anyone could get access to that with a google search and a little digging.