<p>I’ve got a great idea. Scrap these high priced ordeals that only benefit the College Board and ACT who basically own me, based on how many thousands of dollars I have shelled out for them. They are biased assessments that favor privileged kids. It is a total racket. Period.</p>
<p>I’m happy that they’re at least moving in the right direction. I know someone personally who cheated on the ACT–her score jumped 8-10 points (if not more) the second time and for some reason, no one seemed to find this suspicious enough to look into. </p>
<p>I don’t think cheating can ever be 100% prevented but it can be continually discouraged and made more difficult.</p>
<p>I fail to see why they don’t adopt the LSAT precautions:</p>
<p>(1) Photo
(2) Government ID
(3) Fingerprints taken on test day and when you take the bar - if they don’t match, you don’t practice. </p>
<p>Though in the case of undergraduate students, your fingerprints are taken when you apply to graduate. Different prints = degree rescinded.</p>
<p>This seems to be in direct retaliation to the kid from my school getting caught cheating on the SAT. He was really good at taking the SAT so he figured he’d offer to take it for other people. They would print off a fake ID with his picture on it. He eventually started charging $2,000 for his services plus the cost of a roundtrip flight from his college after he graduated. By the time he was caught he had taken the test for 17 different people, including females. At least by sending the photo to the highschool they would ideally catch the differences for some of these students, so I do think it does an ok job at fixing this. Not ideal, but it can’t be</p>
<p>I’m trying to figure out how this works for homeschoolers. If the high school has the id…we are the high school. So will you upload a picture when you register for the exam itself? He has always had to show id at his testing center. Also, does this mean there will be a picture on the actual SAT or ACT score report?</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see how the new restrictions impact scores as a whole. I am, and always have been shocked (suspicious?) at the amount of students scoring tremendously high on the SATs. Any stats out there on how SATs scores compare to, lets say 15 years ago? There was an incident in a school district in NY where a student was arrested for taking SAT tests for others… his price?.. $2,500 per test! (Which he took 15+ times for males and females!). Where does the 2,500 come from? Not the students - the parents of course. And this is just one cheater, impacting admissions for 15 plus students. How on earth will they ever know the magnitude of students who cheated on tests for admissions, and are sill in the schools that admitted them based on these scores? And I agree with the previous post - cheaters will cheat.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the way the SAT scores were re-calibrated about 15 years ago so they are hard to compare. A 730 on the verbal back then is equivalent to an 800 now. That’s why you hear about so many 800s. However, I have heard that average scores have increased since the change, and who knows how much of that is due to cheating. I do think this will make a difference. I have heard several times from students that families with money can get someone to take the SATs for them. This is an attempt to prevent that from happening. Sure, there might still be ways to cheat the system, but the more controls you have, the less likely that is to happen.</p>
<p>This seems like more trouble than it’s worth, but whatever. If kids are willing to go that far, might as well stop them. Good call ACT.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if the time to register for the september act will be delayed because of this?</p>
<p>@descartesz about your first post, guidance counselors will know if students cheated because all student profiles in school databases have their most recent school picture on it. Because of that, all students are required to attend picture day, even if they aren’t buying the pictures. So even if the only time they saw the student was for course selection, they could still look them up on the computer for identity verification. Well, at least that’s how it is at my school. In response to this new rule, any school that doesn’t attach student photos should definitely upgrade their system to what my school does. And I go to a public school with very little funding that runs out of paper for the year in December, so I doubt switching systems could be very expensive.</p>