<p>Is it just plain stealing or something a little more complicated? I can't imagine students just plainly taking the exam then sending it through e-mails to their friends or accomplices. Is it possible they bribe the TA's those who handle the exams? </p>
<p>Also is it cheating if a student downloads a copy of an exam that was not made available officially from the previous year? If so why would it be cheating? Do the exams given throughout the years follow a cycle? As in questions and formatting is similar, and the data being tested on is not out of date.</p>
<p>Some of my instructors give us copies of their old exams on [url=<a href=“http://daviswiki.org/SmartSite]Smartsite[/url”>http://daviswiki.org/SmartSite]Smartsite[/url</a>], which is my college’s course management system. And if students are in sororities/fraternities, I think the sororities/fraternities have a test bank that contains copies of exam material from previous years (from past members of the sororities/fraternities who have taken the courses).</p>
<p>^Interesting, I should have known it involved some sort of test bank and organization. What about exams for the current semester? Say students can receive e-mail of exams before exam day. How do they pull this off?</p>
<p>My professors sometimes email us practice exams 2-3 days before the exam day. Or do you mean email of the exam that would be used on exam day? If it’s the latter, then I don’t know, because my professors write their own exam and try to make it different each quarter/semester. Some professors recycle their exams though, so the material from a past exam would show up again in another semester, and some professors’ exam is literally the study guide itself–for example, in the 2nd course of my introductory bio series, my professor gave us a study guide that was, no joke, the exam itself, so as long as you did the study guide and got everything on the study guide right, you were guaranteed to get an A on the exam.</p>