<p>Someone help me get my jaw off the ground. I just received this private message from someone who get my name off an AMC-12 thread and assumed I was a student, not a parent/teacher. I've reported it to one of the mods, but I'm speechless myself. Here it is:</p>
<p>"I saw that you posted that you are taking the AMC12B exam on a thread a few days back. I am also taking it and am in need of some help. I am unable to go to my dream school and will end up in a community college b/c i slacked off in high school. There is this "bully" in my school going to harvard and i would love to show him up. The only problem is is that i am no where near as smart as he is to get a good score. My school takes the exam in the afteroon. This is where i need your help. I am willing to pay 100bucks in a paypal account if you can send me the answers from your answer booklet given out at the end of the test before 12:30 on wednesday. Any help would be a godsend, even just 10 of them. I can be contacted via email, website, cellphone text, etc etc. Thank You very much xoxo"</p>
<p>I am sorry that such a thing happened. It is so sad that there are people like that. I truly believe that any of these exams should be given 3 versions at a time and NO answers given out until the exam is not being given anywhere.</p>
<p>I am glad you reported it. I think I have read about things like this happening with SATs - exploiting the east coast - west coast time difference. Now, the AMCs...</p>
<p>I just volunteered at our local MathCounts chapter competition. Before the countdown round, the MC warned the audience that no pictures or video would be allowed. (The questions and answers are shown on a large screen). This is a <em>middle school</em> competition.</p>
<p>randomdad, did they also confiscate all cell phones which might have had cameras in them? I received a mailing about an event upcoming where cell phones will not be permitted inside the room...</p>
<p>Hmmm, I guess the disadvantage of a screen name like "tokenadult" is that I have little chance to catch cheaters like that. </p>
<p>For what it's worth, that's one of the reasons why the college admissions process has to have mystery elements to it, so that persons who have high stats through cheating will, I hope, be found out through interviews or letters of recommendation.</p>
<p>Several months ago on the Yale forum, a poster requested help with Latin translations. She asked no specific questions at first, apart from posting the sentences. I-- perhaps a little bluntly-- told her that we could not help, because of the obvious potential for cheating. I was shocked when a number of other posters criticised me severely for unhelpfulness, and provided complete answers-- not just "help"-- to the questions posed. While I can of course not know whether or not that poster was trying to cheat, and now have some reason to believe she was not, it still seems to me that I did the right thing. Perhaps not? Was I wrong? Was the right thing to do to have good faith? In this mysterious and impersonal internet world, good faith and naivete are a very short step apart, but perhaps I misjudged.</p>
<p>Every testing, gaming or sport competition needs to be fully aware of the possibilities of cheating, and to constantly monitor and revise their procedures. That is part of the reason for the organization's existance, and the groups that don't monitor well lose their credibility. The AP Calc Exam requires the student's calculations to be shown in the test booklet - shouldn't the AMC have a similar backup? </p>
<p>I can't think of many ways that getting a few numeric answers would help in most math competitions. Usually, a student has to be able to show his or her reasoning ability. Anyway, a high AMC score is not a dividing line between college acceptance and rejection, especially when the applicant doesn't have a consistently high math performance.</p>
<p>There was a local situation several years ago with an academic HS team that suddenly did very well in a written competition. It produced a "hot spot," a noticeable number of centralized, elevated scores. The explanation was obvious. This kind of group cheating is actually pretty easy to spot. I'm guessing that the $100 e-mailer planned to get a list of answers and turn around and sell them again. Easy enough to catch - but the punishment? I wonder what the AMC organization does in such a case.</p>
<p>I can't believe someone would try and cheat on the AMC. If so, they are probably appliying to MIT (most likely to "show up that bully") and I bet the adcoms would catch the inconsistency. If it isn't for the college admissions process, and just for the vanity of a point number, that is equally stupid but not nearly as immoral. (note: both are highly immoral)</p>
<p>Some people compare College Admissions to war, but it doesn't have to be as desperate. Cheating to prove yourself to a "bully" only makes you more of a loser.</p>
<p>Example from my life. In middle-school track. I was 12 years old, and turned 13 in June. I assumed that my age bracket was 11-12, because I was 12 years old . The age bracket I competed in was called "midget" as opposed to "youth". Apparently, you were supposed to be in the age bracket for the end of the season. I was supposed to be in the Youth bracket, for ages 13-14. Nobody found out, but I had a talk with my older brother. He convinced me that regardless of my successes in the incorrect age bracket, they were worthless. I returned my medals and one trophy (:() to my coach. He tried to blame himself for the screw-up (as the paperwork should've caught it, etc. etc.) but it wasn't anyones fault.</p>
<p>This story can be applicable to his situation because, well, even if he makes it into that top college it will be worthless. Even if he gets the 150+ score, it will be worthless. He won't be showing up that "bully" (who I congratulate for an EA acceptance to Harvard). His accomplishment is akin to scrawling "Here is your AMC 12B Score: 150" on a napkin and doing a little victory dance around it in the cafeteria.</p>
<p>A hollow "victory" indeed. And I have to wonder, how well would you do in a class of people who really did get that score on the exam, surrounded by the people who didn't cheat? </p>
<p>I feel the same way about artificially inflated grades or humongous amounts of SAT prep. I hope you can keep your head above water when you are now in classes with students who had no pouf to their application. Or am I just naive here? Perhaps this is how it's done now.</p>
<p>The person who wants to cheat might want to think again. Suppose he does get a high score on the AMC. That test is hard. At least that's what I've been led to believe by the scores my own son and his friends (the mathletes crowd at his school) got. Won't people then believe he may know something about math if he does well and start asking him how to solve problems and such? Won't they expect him to know what he's doing? And what will he do then? Since he won't be able to back up his score with any kind of knowledge it will be fairly obvious that his score was fishy.</p>
<p>Anybody take a securities test? Tests for becoming a licensed broker (series 7) or continuing education?</p>
<p>These tests are administered at a test center and you take the test on a computer. The test centers have lockers, and you must put EVERYTHING in the locker including your watch, cellphone and wallet. No scratch paper is allowed. You check in, get escorted to the computer terminal, take the test and leave. This costs a lot more to administer than having 50 kids in a room and passing out test booklets, but it is harder to cheat.</p>
<p>Texas 137. I would have been upset as well receiving such a private message. However, I can't really say I'm surprised. Kids today are under so much pressure to be the best at everything. If they're not trying to prove themselves worthy to a bully, they're trying to please pushy parents or live up to impossible standards that they think friends and teachers expect of them.</p>
<p>Not very long ago, I was driving carpool with my daughter and two other hs freshmen. One was very upset because of the cheating that is going on among the kids at the top of the class. He is a very serious student looking at schools with tough admissions and wants to keep his high class rank, and if possible, improve it. He was wondering how he could do that since he depends on studying to achieve it and they were going for the sure thing - and no one had been caught.</p>
<p>I told him that cheaters are always caught. It might not be today or tomorrow. It might not even be in high school, but it will happen. I pointed out that class rank is everything in our state because of the 10% rule. It's not everything every place else and that the schools he is looking at would definitely want to see scores, ec's, essays and rec's and not to let it get him too far down. Two students in my son's class were caught cheating on a test and were disciplined. One lost his NHS status. As for the plagiarism, although it may be easier to get away with it in hs, your first plagiarized college paper will likely get you nailed.</p>
<p>I felt very good when the kids in the car agreed that living life as a fraud is not a full life and that it's not the kind of life they want. I truly believe that there are lots of other students out there that feel the same way. I'm just glad that many tests and competitions are so strict in enforcing their no cheating guidlines. That's when the honest kids get to see what they're made of and the cheaters like the ones midwesterner refers to find out sometimes winning isn't worth the cost.</p>