Everyone who took the test on the first and second weeks said they were extremely difficult. Their version of “test 1” seemed quite easy. The only thing about this whole situation that makes me believe them is that when I looked through the doc history, they were discussing everything and slowly adding stuff to the doc. Also it wouldn’t be the first time that CEE repeated questions from previous years. For example, the Sepal-petal-petal-sepal question was repeated almost every year in the practice tests.
What do you guys think the cutoff will be this year? Last year everyone was freaking out saying that the test was hard and the cutoff would be sub-20, but it turned out to be around 24. I think this year the cutoff could be 25 or 26 as the test was hard, but not impossible.
@Solanaceae I remember last year we were all thinking the cutoff would be sub-20 as the test was harder than 2015, when the cutoff was 22.5, only to be surprised when the results came out.
I agree the cutoff will probably be around 25 this year as I found the test to be around the same or at a slightly easier difficulty than last year and people are only getting better as time goes on.
I think the cutoff will be somewhere in between 2015 and 2016…
@Solanaceae “Just seems a bit suspicious. If you are really that desperate to get Semifinalist, I wish you the best of luck on the Semifinal Exam when you go against the people who actually deserve it.”
When I joined the doc on the 14th, mind you, I noticed that there was a chart with about 20 questions in it. About 10 of them were questions from last year, 5 of them were questions that I had never seen before, and 5 of them were questions from the test that I had just taken. There were about 10 other people online at that time. I said that I didn’t have most of those questions on my test, and they did not have most of my questions on my test. So I decided to create my own test. Later on, a guy named Richi came on, and he had taken the test on the same day as I did. He said that his questions were identical to the ones I was putting in my chart, so he helped me fill it out. Everyone who joined after me said their questions were like the questions in my chart. So we figured that there were 2 tests, one for 7th-12th, and 1 for 13th-17th. It would make sense for CEE to do this because the answers have a high chance of being leaked over a 2-week testing window, especially among friends from different schools.
IDK what to tell you. All I did was write down the conversation that we had on the google doc that day. I was trying to do something nice by telling you what was going on in the doc chat, but I wish that I hadn’t.
@KiaAfzali I was merely connecting the dots from my given context. By leaking that there were two versions, people could access the document saying that they took “Version 1”, and make up some random questions. If the owner comments that the questions weren’t on the test, the cheater could say “Oh, I must’ve took a different version”.
However, I never insinuated that you were the culprit; I just noticed that you were the origin (of replication) of this false statement on this particular forum. If you were just a second messenger and a victim like the rest of us, then please accept my apologies for accusing you in any way.
There’s no need to stress over this. Hopefully the problem will be cortisol(ved) soon. 
When do the open exam scotlres get released?
^ scores [sic]
March 15th
@Solanaceae Sorry for lashing out at you. Apology accepted.
@WigginsKenny Thanks!
So the whole story is -
- Some people wanted to cheat and created a google doc to collect exam questions. They pretended that they took this year's exam and mocked some discussion
- Some STUPID real exam takers joined the doc and distributed their real questions
- The cheaters collected enough questions and then deleted the doc
- Everyone who took the exam except the cheaters is pissed off.
Who is/are the owners of the google doc? We need to report this to CEE.
Perhaps since the doc owners have a list of people who signed up for it, and the people who claimed there were two versions of the tests, we could ask them for help as in to identify the cheaters?
ScienceFTW is the owner, can he provide the list of people who signed it?
GeometryForLife is also a strong supporter of that Google Doc. When did he join the google doc and when did he take the exam, could he provide his name for Ms. Frame’s verification?
@JohnScott_2001 how am i a strong ‘supporter’? I’m the one that first asked why people were saying that there were 2 versions and thought that something fishy was going on. I dont appreciate being accused of cheating, but here is what I’ve said throughout this thread.
Please let me know where I ‘strongly supported’ the Google Doc
"Any advice on staying motivated?
I got a 16 last year as a freshman and did equally bad this year, and am really dissapointed because i did really well on the practice tests, but panicked during the test and felt like time was passing rapidly…i feel like after taking it twice and still not making semi’s is pretty sad and embarrasing…"
- I thought it was really hard and did bad, If I had cheated then wouldn't the test be easy?
"i took v2 apparently (later week) and know i got at least 20, but idk, i made a lot of stupid errors on that test that couldve gotten me like a 28-30
how do people know that there are 2 versions??"
-I said I apparently took v2 because of @KiaAfzali post about there being 2 versions, but I asked how he/she knew that there were two versions
“@Dukehopeful98 thats what it looks like to me too, which is why im worried”
-One guy suggested cheating may have been going on, and i agreed
“it can make more of a difference than you think. Especially to those who feel like they are on the border of making it to semis. Cutoff might go up fraction of a point leading to more dissapointment. However, theres nothing to be done about it.”
- @KiaAfzali was saying how cheating wouldnt make a difference, but I was not happy that people may have cheated because it would have made a big difference.
"@PercyFowl It’s disgusting how desperate people are to achieve something to put on their resume. Most of these guys dont even actually care about bio, they cheat to “pad” their resume to HYPMS.
To further confirm that there is no two versions, I would’ve liked to think that CEE wouldve mentioned something about it on here:
https://www.usabo-trc.org/whats-new-2017-usabo
I wonder if CEE is aware about this…or even cares…"
-I’m completely against the idea of cheating
I still thought it was very suspicious so I asked the guy who first said “Come join the google doc” @steinalbert and got some responses
- the 25 questions that were put before the actual test.
Response
We had noticed similarities between questions from past years and put those there in order to attempt to remember, notice that there were around 3 of us a week after the exam, compared to 5-10 only a day after the exam.
- why was the doc deleted
“We received multiple requests with improper verification, we wanted to make sure that people with extensions were not gaining access to the document. We can reinstate the doc in a week, do not worry, none of us cheated.”
Also I took the test on 2/16 and joined the doc very late at night on the same day.
I can verify when I recieved the invitation to the doc, and I guess Ms. Frame is supposed to verify when I took the test?
If you want my personal information to verify or something, PM me.
Oops, double post.
Do you really think CEE is going to investigate the situation regarding 3-4 potential cheaters? I’d think CEE has better things to do…
They didn’t technically cheat. We gave them the answers. We are not even supposed to discuss the answers, let alone create an entire google doc with the answers. Also, we don’t know their real names and we don’t have proof they cheated.