<p>Zante-
I've read many of your posts over the months and wish you the best-my d is into a number of state schools (Michigan, Wisconsin, Mass) but is awaiting word on her dreams...</p>
<p>M&B22- I agree, he was a jerk. She doesn't have a phony personality and would never bend over, even for an Ivy interview. I pride myself on the fact that she is the antithesis of me and always gives a straightforward response, rather than playing the popularity game I was taught. I guess I'll know in a few weeks if this strategy works. The mother lion is coming out in me now as I anticipate rejection letters, but there is much to be learned from adversity in life.</p>
<p>Thanks! I only have one acceptance but it's a great relief...but likewise, still waiting anxiously on my dreams :p</p>
<p>that's so cool</p>
<p>I agree that there is way too much cheating (and plagerism), and that anything a student does to influence their grade on an exam, assignment, in a course, or whether or not they get accepted to college, would be cheating and the perpetrators should be summarily executed. That said, most of the kids in the current B-school flap were simply taking advantage of a programming quirk to take an early peak at their own, already made admissions decisions, and did doing nothing at all to affect the outcome. I don't see how this compares at all to any generally accepted cheating scenario.</p>
<p>Not Yet in Business School, and Already Flunking Ethics
By TOM ZELLER Jr. </p>
<p>Published: March 14, 2005</p>
<p>A teacher says that he isn't giving a test grade back until Monday, because he hasn't finished grading them all," a participant wrote in an online forum at collegeconfidential.com last Wednesday. "You walk by his desk and notice that yours is done and on the top of the stack. </p>
<p>"Would it be unethical to walk close to his desk on the way out and sneak a peek?"</p>
<p>This is one of hundreds of hypothetical scenarios rippling across the Web after it was revealed two weeks ago that some eager business school applicants - most of them aiming at Harvard - exploited a technical glitch to get an early peek at their pending decisions online. </p>
<p>Officials at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon called it an inexcusable ethical breach and rejected the application of any student who exploited the hole. Stanford and Dartmouth continue to deliberate over what action to take. </p>
<p>Others said it was something far more innocent, and accused the schools of pious grandstanding. And the incident seemed to point up for everyone a persistent, digital-age truism: that the social and ethical rules that govern life offline do not always translate neatly online. </p>
<p>"There's a big difference in people's minds between the physical world and the virtual world in how they perceive the seriousness of incidents like this," said Lauren Weinstein, a co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, an advocacy group in Menlo Park, Calif., that tracks issues relating to the evolution of the Internet. "We have not come to grips with the fact that not all actions are created equal." </p>
<p>The actions that sparked the current debate went like this: </p>
<p>At 12:15 a.m. on Wednesday, March 2, a visitor to an online forum posted instructions for exploiting some sloppy Web page coding at ApplyYourself.com, a company based in Fairfax, Va., that, among other things, handles applications for some of the country's most elite business schools, including Harvard Business School. </p>
<p>"I know everyone is getting more and more anxious to check status of their apps to HBS, given their black box," wrote the individual, known only as "brookbond," referring to applications to Harvard Business School. Harvard's decisions are to go out on March 30. "So I looked around their site and found a way. Here are the steps." </p>
<p>Precisely 119 Harvard applicants followed those steps, which required them to log in to their application accounts with the school and, using some creative copying and pasting from the Web page's source code (something any Web surfer is free to do), create an address that would access their application decision - if one had been made. </p>
<p>About 100 applicants to other business schools at M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Dartmouth and Duke, which also use the ApplyYourself.com service, made use of the recipe as well. Some applicants saw rejection letters. Others saw nothing. </p>
<p>The schools found out about the breach later on Wednesday, and Harvard decided to act the following Monday. "Our mission is to educate principled leaders who make a difference in the world," Kim B. Clark, the dean of Harvard Business School, wrote in an official statement. "To achieve that, a person must have many skills and qualities, including the highest standards of integrity, sound judgment and a strong moral compass - an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. Those who have hacked into this Web site have failed to pass that test." </p>
<p>But many online commenters thought the ethics of the incident were more nuanced. </p>
<p>"I might feel differently if I knew that the applicants were aware that they were breaking the rules," Edward W. Felten, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, wrote in his Web log. "But I'm not sure that an applicant, on being told that his letter was already on the Web and could be accessed by constructing a particular U.R.L., would necessarily conclude that accessing it was against the rules."</p>
<p>David Lampe, the executive director of marketing and communications for Harvard Business School, does not agree. "Anyone who followed these steps, it would have been very clear to them that this is not the legitimate route to this information," he said. "To us, an ethical breach is an ethical breach whether it happens digitally or in the real world."</p>
<p>Mr. Lampe said the 119 students are welcome to reapply next year. </p>
<p>But some of the applicants affected said they felt Harvard's decision was overwrought. </p>
<p>"If typing in one Web address makes me unworthy of their institution, then H.B.S. is not a place I could see myself attending," said one applicant who asked to remain anonymous to avoid jeopardizing her chances at other graduate schools. "I would not attend that school now even if I was offered a full scholarship and a winning lottery ticket."</p>
<p>Some other applicants argued that, in a world where viewing source code and pasting Web addresses are pedestrian tasks, their cyberpeeking was on a moral par with taking a pencil home from the office. </p>
<p>"First of all, it's such a low bar to set for hacking," said Verlin Henderson, an information technology manager at a credit and collections company who lives in Raleigh, N.C., and was one of the Harvard hopefuls who made use of the instructions. (He saw a rejection letter, or in the parlance of the graduate school rush, he was "dinged.")</p>
<p>"Coming up with the recipe for Toll House cookies was hard, but making Toll House cookies by reading the recipe on the box is not," he said.</p>
<p>Mr. Henderson is still awaiting word from a couple of other schools and, in the meantime, has poured his disdain for Harvard into a line of T-shirts that seek to "Free the HBS 119." He said three of the shirts had been sold as of Saturday.</p>
<p>"I do hope some of the unfortunate saw it and got a laugh out of it," Mr. Henderson said</p>