No! the college board shouldn’t cancel scores that made a drastic improvement. I worked my ass off all summer break studying and practicing 9 plus hours a day on practice problems/test.When my family went on vacation; I stayed home and studied. It’s not the students who improved drastically fault It’s CB!!!
Can CB tell who came from Asia countries that have had the tests back in 10/2017 and only cancel these testers’ scores? I agree with @nerdmd, it is possible for kids to have significant improvement without having access to the test prior.
One of the network morning shows mentioned there is a petition to invalidate the August SAT. I googled and found it: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/invalidate-august-2018-sat-north-america-using-same-text-october-2017-sat-asia?from=timeline&isappinstalled=0
My heart goes out to all the students who took the exam; no score should be cancelled without proof a student was cheating.
I really, really hope they don’t invalidate it.
Egads! if that happens can you imagine how many kids will be sitting for the October test?
I remembered seeing advice given to people, in order to get more up-to-date real tests for practice they could do online search. I forgot whether it was here on college confidential or on Reddit. If you recycle a test and if you don’t have a mechanism to prevent leaking of past tests to the WWW, you will have people who either took the test before or have practiced them. I don’t know how you detect who has practiced the past test obtained from internet. And is it test taker’s fault to have practiced using an internet-available-real-test? Maybe or maybe not?
I don’t think the whitehouse petition thing is serious and CB would not dare to cancel something that they themselves are the culprit. I know they have canceled test results from Asian countries before due to cheating scandals.
But will the colleges be suspectious of the validity of the 8/25’s SAT scores?!
I don’t think colleges will be suspicious. It’s only one piece of the puzzle.
“But will the colleges be suspectious of the validity of the 8/25’s SAT scores?!”
If you’re from Asia and you went from 1300 to 1600 they should be!
They should not cancel scores. Huge lawsuit. They should flag scores: those from Asia, and any clusters as well as compare to previous scores if available.
Ironically I started this thread to ask what people thought about difficulty after the June situation
I had no idea about this whole scandal.
I feel bad for the international kids who didn’t cheat. Many of these international kids were given the same test again through no fault of their own.
I don’t know about the international kids, but some US kids get onto social media as soon as a test is over to discuss the questions. I would guess that international kids do the same. Even without cheating, kids scores would go up if they had a chance to retake the same exact test - which is exactly what the College Board gave them.
How much longer will David Coleman be running the show?
Exactly - It’s not the intl students’ fault who used practice tests/exams they found online to study (now if they knew they were going to get that test, that’s a problem). Overall, the fact that the exam was out there and some kids will do disproportionally well will affect possible curving and be a problem for kids who didn’t have the benefit of the preview.
Well, technically it is their fault. You cannot expect me to believe that these aspiring MIT-level applicants can’t tell the difference between practice exams and pirated exams? On the spectrum of things that are unethical there are plenty of things that rate higher, but it’s still wrong.
^nerdmd, I’m not saying that the CB should cancel all scores, I’m saying that if they take any action that is likely the action they will take for those test takers they suspect had access to test answers. Perhaps not. After all, this is no one’s fault but the CB, and the person who posted the test online. We can’t fault students for looking for past tests online to use for studying.
I don’t have a pony in this particular race, but if I did, I would have them signing up for the next ACT. The scary part is they are going to use statistical analysis to determine who was cheating. So someone with a great improvement could be accused. Frankly, the more I hear, and while I hate to say this out loud…it seems they need to invalidate the test.
You dont invalidate a test based on conjecture. Most kids who took it knew nothing about this. It would cause enormous harm to thousands. For all we know it will be quite easy to ascertain cheaters
Plenty of students move from overseas to the US and vice versa every year. I personally know several. As for “buying” the test, as I understand it, it was actually available online for anyone who could find it to download. I may be wrong, but even if it were for sale, it was on a Chinese site, so why would, say Koreans, be more likely to have it than Americans?
I know several kids who took the October 2017 test in Asia then flew to the US for the August test in 2018. They didn’t download the old test or cheat in any way, but they sat for the exact same test twice because the College Board, with it’s ~$100 million annual tax-free revenue, can’t find a way to produce unique tests for each date.
I condemn the actual cheaters 100%, but the College Board is also to blame, and every time something like this happens, many, many innocent, hard-working kids suffer. It’s awful and I genuinely can’t believe it’s still a problem.