It appears that the College Board does not punish students who cheat or prep academies that promote cheating. Despite countless reports of cheating that parents and students send to College Board, the organization releases the scores without a thorough investigation. It seems that the most that the College Board does is release the test scores at a later date.
Let’s think about it. What is the likelihood of multiple students’ receiving 2,400 from one high school? Not 2~3 students from a top ten boarding school but 7~10 students from one high school in South Korea or China? That is not all! It may or may not be an exaggeration but some people say that this one high school in South Korea did not have a single student who received below 2,300 on the January 2015 test.
This kind of widespread cheating merits a full-blown investigation and punishment of the students, the prep academies, and the high schools. The victims are not only limited to students in South Korea and China but across the world. Most students work very hard to earn their scores, not buy them from academies. Also, college board and high school counselors should not tolerate and overlook such illegal activities.
According articles on Google, such as the one by Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/01/21/new-cheating-concerns-raised-about-sat-being-given-in-asia-on-jan-24/), it is clear that College Board knew about the leak in the International Version of the SAT. In fact, College Board was aware that prep academies in South Korea and China had a copy of the test before it was actually administered. Yet, it did not change the test.
So, the students knew the essay topics beforehand and had written it out before going into the test. Some really dumb kids who apparently memorized the version that the prep academies gave and ended up receiving a zero on the essay. However, some of the smarter students were not dumb enough and wrote a different version of the essay. Regardless, all these kids literally spent less than five minutes on each section and slept the remainder of the time. Most of them received 2,300 to 2,400.
No parties involved suffered any consequences for this illegal and immoral activity!
If you are a student who works hard, you are also a victim. You deserve to be enraged as I am. You have to urge College Board to take responsibility and ensure that each student gets a fair shot at his or her dream school and take action!