<p>Why is this even a discussion? It is only cheating if the upcoming exams are the same as the old exam. It isn’t studying if a student is remembering just the answers to the test questions. Instead of studying the subject they are just studying the exam. </p>
<p>It so happens sometimes that a student spends a great amount of time dedicated to studying for a class. The student really knows there stuff and when it comes to the exam they fail miserably because they had no sense of the structure of the exam, although they really do know the content. How fair is this for the student in a class that only has two exams for the term/semester? </p>
<p>Is it considered cheating purchasing and using GMAT books that provide old exams as practice?</p>
<p>The only thing I don’t like about solutions is that they can easily become a crutch. I think it is pretty worthwhile to be able to think through a problem and do it yourself. An important part of the problem, I think, is figuring out how to use what you’ve learned in class to solve it. When you don’t actually make those decisions yourself and instead read a solution manual and understand how someone else did it, I think you often don’t appreciate a lot of the details.</p>
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<p>I don’t think this happens that much. In my experience, professors are pretty good at designing exams so that students can demonstrate their knowledge of the material. I don’t think students failed those exams because they get tripped up by test-taking. My college exams were way less game-able than the ACT or the GRE.</p>
<p>Not that there is no such thing as taking a bad exam, I personally think more often than not that this was an excuse used by students who didn’t understand the material in my the classes.</p>