I hadn’t thought of it this way, but are you saying that the modus operandi would be to practice every single test previously administered in order to have prior exposure to the very questions that might show up at the official test sitting? That would make some sense, but now over two years out, the number of forms ever administered must be starting to pile up. That would be a lot of work and one would think lead to some decent score increases even without exposure to the specific questions.
The test wasn’t merely hiding in dark corners of the web; it was published in an Asian prep company’s hard-copy practice book.
Just because someone publishes a book or has a website does not mean that it it legal or ethical. So let’s dispense with that as an excuse.
I’m not suggesting any strategy. My SAT days are behind me and I have a couple of decades to worry about the impact on my own potential children. I don’t know what the CB’s MO is; perhaps they think that the sheer volume of past tests will preclude any individual from memorizing every question.
It’s been reported in mainstream media in the past. Sadly, this recent instance is not unique.
Now, to be clear, my opinion, as I previously stated, is that the preponderance of blame falls squarely on the CB. If their legal teams were more aggressive fighting internet pirates/copyright infringers, if their development team actually developed new tests, we would not have these issues, or at least not to this degree.
I agree with @skieurope that they should really just be developing new tests. Fighting internet prates might not be worth it because the blob is too big now but a repository of tests questions tagged with dates of use and difficulty would enable random tests to be generated with ease. They could spend their R&D money ( :)) ) on developing new questions to add to the database…seems so basic to me.
@center completely concur with what ethical behavior would be and that one would “report it”…not sure how but I agree. That said, then what? Ours practiced every possible legitimate exam he could find and simply ran out of material to practice. He was at a second sitting trying to increase his SS so he had done a dozen already. At end of the day, no reason whatsoever to recycle (pure laziness for not developing domestic and international exams) another test, and again, within a year. I can say that ours commented that they all just blend together when you’re in a timed, pressure driven real test string. If you have time to think…”is that the same question from my practice exam last month?”, you’ve “screwed the pooch” already. You just read, think, answer and move on. An unfair advantage, again.is not cheating unless ill begotten. It may or may not have been in this case. I say, CB offered a complimentary sitting FWIW…maybe not much for many students working on an ED SS.
I feel like they don’t even need to create alot of new tests, but just jumble the questions. How hard is it to create new tests with questions from a database? If each question has a value/difficulty - they could do this. Recycle questions, not entire tests!
@suzyQ7 thats what I was saying–but they could develop fresh questions to feed into the database to keep building it–the more robust the database the better.
I doubt this is going to affect US citizens and most internationals at all. Don’t most US universities have separate admission buckets for domestic vs international applicants? And for internationals, kids are likely competing for spots against other kids from their own countries (if they come from larger countries). I think the kids who will lose out here are the Chinese nationals who took the test on 8/25 but didn’t study from the purloined material. If all Chinese nationals have their exams invalidated they are going to lose out on all of the money and time they paid to come here. If the exams aren’t invalidated, they are going to be competing for spots against kids who had an unfair advantage score-wise.
No vested interest in this as DD is already done with College hunt and is enrolled in Columbia this fall.
Reading through the various posts, I couldn’t help but clarify some misgivings:
Based on a few Chinese friends, the test was offered internationally in October last year but it is wrong to assume only those who took it in October 2017 have actually seen the test. Many college prep places (read KD, Princeton Review etc) in China have given this exact same test to its students “unofficially” for practice and those kids have a better understanding of the mistakes they made.
Given the time frame involved, it is highly likely that those who flew in to take the test from international locations were actively preparing and thus may have had a crack at the test and a review session with results.
Neither 1, nor 2 makes them “cheaters” per se, because the exact same scenario may have applied to local kids had they come across a test that they have had time to practice with their college prep place.
None of the 3 points above justifies the baffling practice of re-using a previous test in its entirety. In this day and age of computers, all it would take is a little bit of creativity to combine a few previous years’/sittings’ tests to create a new one.
A few concerned parents have ended up canceling their children’s test - out of worry that they may have had an unfair disadvantage (note, I am not calling it “cheating”).
@Holistic2 “… college prep places (read KD, Princeton Review etc) in China have given this exact same test to its students “unofficially” for practice and those kids have a better understanding of the mistakes they made.
2) Given the time frame involved, it is highly likely that those who flew in to take the test from international locations were actively preparing and thus may have had a crack at the test and a review session with results…”
@hopefulmom123 a comp sitting was a mere suggestion but if CB did offer that, it is the essentially admitting culpability that a problem existed. Doubtful. I still say, either throw the tests out of those who took the 10-17 exam in Asia or a specific geographic area (I do not know if it’s mainland China or beyond), OR go down the line looking for clear cheaters. If one is caught cheating an SAT, s/he should be banned and move on to ACT. Beyond ethics, SAT and CB need a deterrent component.
CB routinely makes precious exams available for future practice, no? How would Chinese or otherwise students who merely practiced on a prior exam KNOW said same exam would be offered in its exact entirety and order 10 months later? Unfair practice advantage, yes, deliberate cheating I’m not really seeing. Lame CB, yes.
CB does make official tests available but as I read the 10/17 was not made available, instead it was on the internet as folks took pics with their phones or recreated it. Anyone who reviewed it was not abiding by their agreement with CB. Although I can easily see someone studying all available material without thinking CB would be so lazy as to offer the exact same test. It would seem you probably have groups who knowingly cheated and also groups of kids that found the 10/17 test and studied it - it would be interesting to see the distribution of grades on this exam.
While I do think the SAT is necessary given current grade inflation it seems that the only way the CB will ever improve is for more colleges to quit recommending submission of ACT/SAT scores.
@yearstogo I think standardized “tests” are absolutely critical for colleges to truly get an accurate picture of students. With over half of all high school students graduating with A averages and massive grade inflation a known problem how do you separate 40k A students applying to say Harvard with a 4.0? Not saying the tests are perfect but A TEST is necessary to validate grades and ability.
@bigfandave This raises another issue with CB, a paucity of quality practice material available for the New SAT. CB posted four sample practice tests prior to the New test’s debut in March 2016. Since then, CB posted 4 more that were actual administered tests, the most recent being practice test #8, given in Jan 2017. Several more QAS tests have been released to test takers, who then often post them online (links to at least five are available at reddit), but CB has not posted them on its website. I don’t understand why CB has not done so, considering how much CB touts practice as an important method for improving scores. Surely CB wouldn’t reuse a QAS test, right?
Was the test officially released and available legally online, or was it pirated and spread illegally, @marvin100 ?
IIRC, they closed some of the test sites in Asia due to security challenges. Don’t know if these were reopened or not. DId this lead to the large number of Asians flying to the US to take it here? Is there any chance someone knew and leaked that this would be the test administered?
^Oct 2017 international was not released. It was pirated or otherwise recreated (apparently a common occurrence for a widely-given test form). International tests only have one QAS per year, in May, unlike the US dates, which include three.
As for the large number of Asians flying over, in retrospect that makes complete sense. There is no August test date internationally, but August is far superior to October for those with early app deadlines, and apparently it is very common for Asian students to visit colleges in the US around that time anyway.
The August test date was new in 2017, but the test dates fill up. Did they open additional test sites for the August administration? Many colleges are pretty quiet in August. So it’s not the ideal time to visit for a number of schools.