VERY complicated issue; need help ASAP!

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

<p>Hello everyone,</p>

<p>Here is the situation:
We just had an AP MOCK EXAM for MICROECONMICS today.
This was our second mock exam; previously she gave 2000 one, so we predicted that this one would be 2005.
We have a tutor, and he gave us the released 2005 exam, and bunch of other practice tests for us to study.</p>

<p>Now here’s the thing; my friends and I did exceptionally well, to the point where the teacher said, "I don’t like how you did on my test, and I think you already took the test."
She says taht she will talk to us individually (me and my friends), about this issue.
And my friend noted (i left early), that she placed just OUR tests separately.</p>

<p>It is true that we went over the 2005 carefully because we predicted that she’ll give this as our mock exam, but this does not mean we didn’t study.
We study everyday ALOT for economics, and just yesterday together we studied for about 8 hours together, for example; the time we put in is big, but the teacher probably BELIEVES that we already had seen this test.</p>

<p>The teacher finds this suspicious, of course I would agree, of how we’d get close to 100% while normally most of us get an OK grade. (one of my friend is doing very well, so it’s not as suspicious for him, and most of us are certain that we got 60/60 on the multiple choice section, and maybe couple wrong on free-response, which MAY be suspicious)</p>

<p>So far my options are:</p>

<li><p>I can straight up say that we studied VERY hard, and if I have to - tell her that she has no right to judge my results and say that I’ve seen this test before, or possibily mention that giving released exams (which anyone can purchase off AP Central) for school tests is not a responsible action.</p></li>
<li><p>Tell the truth; we have a tutor, his sources - we invest so much time into economics because we want to do well on it, and we really like the course. I can emphasize that we study so much, and (hopefullly) convince that we did all this NOT just for marks, but we wanted to just generally do WELL in economics, and learn it to full potential.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>This is getting very complicated, and I really don’t know what to do.
Any help or ideas would be REALLY appreciated.
(The teacher is going to talk to us on the following Monday or Tuesday…so please help ASAP!)</p>

<p>Thanks,</p>

2

<p>What kind of teacher believes students are cheating simply because they do exceptionally well. It’s like she’s uncomfortable with student success.</p>

<p>You can tell her you studied extra hard. She can’t PROVE you knew anything on the test.</p>

3

<p>tell her shes a ***** and shes behaving unreasonably
what kind of teacher would say “I dont like how you did on my test”
sounds like she was making it as hard as possible so everyone failed</p>

4

<p>Well, she was right, wasn’t she? You did see the exam before it was given.</p>

<p>Of course, you can’t be punished over this. That’s ridiculous, unless this exam counted towards your grade. It was, after all, a publicly accessible test and a blatantly obvious choice for study material for a national exam.</p>

5

<p>I guess this is a question of: Why should you be penalized for having a tutor? If I’m not mistaken these exams that you use are publicly available. The fact that you even have a tutor, and the fact that you guys studied alot, shows that you really care about the class and want to do well. I don’t see why your teacher should have an issue with that.</p>

<p>I say tell the truth and hold your head up high…I mean I bet not too many people in your class are doing the same thing.</p>

6

<p>You should get in trouble just for using “alot”. She isn’t allowed to penalize you for reviewing something that has been released to others than just her (or micro teachers in general). Studying that test is practically the same as memorizing a review sheet and then doing well on the actual test because numbers are similar. I don’t know if the MC section is online, but free responses certainly are, and it would be illogical for her to take action against you if she gave a FR to you and you did well because you looked it over earlier. It’s available to anyone.</p>

7

<p>If you say you’ve seen the test beforehand, there is a chance that the teacher may file that down as cheating and give you an honor code violation (though it makes no sense why it should be considered cheating, seeing as how the test is available online). This has happened at my school before; in AP Microecon this year, a group of students ordered the answers to the workbook we use in class, knowing full well that the teacher takes some of her free response questions out of the book. They were found out (I’ll skip the specifics about how this happened), and they were all given honor code violations.</p>

<p>Keep mum about having seen the test and stick to your story that you guys just studied very very hard.</p>

<p>Don’t admit to anything that may be seen as even slightly sketchy.</p>

8

<p>Depends on the teacher, but I’d have told her that I’ve seen this material before and that it is freely accessible by the public. </p>

<p>However, gauge the teacher well before choosing. </p>

<p>I would be suspicious too if I was the teacher. No one gets close to 100 percent on an AP test you haven’t seen before.</p>

9

<p>Thanks everyone,</p>

<p>Of course, our first priority is to maintain both our reputation and the relationship with teacher.</p>

<p>We haven’t made a final decision, but we are leaning towards telling the truth.
I don’t think we should speak on the legal/technical side (saying that it’s publicly accessible, you gave us that, you have no right to judge this mark based on our normal performance) of the story, but convince with full honesty and integrity that:</p>

<ol>
<li>marks are not everything</li>
<li>our effort and care</li>
<li>we acknowledge your opinion, etc.</li>
</ol>

<p>*also, would it be fair for her to make us write another different test (why and why not)?</p>

<p>Any thoughts?</p>

<p>Thanks in advance,</p>

10

<p>i’d tell the truth,
and offer to write a different test
to show i knew the material</p>

11

<p>I don’t ever really play the honor police on a message board but this is an easy one: this is all on you, not the teacher.</p>

<p>Now if you were really genuine about wanting to do well on the exam and thus had access to the 2005 examine, then you could have told her before you took the test in class that you had already taken the exam.</p>

<p>But you didnt. Instead you took it hoping that you would just get a high grade and no one would ever know. But only NOW when you are caught in the act do you have to rationalize your actions.</p>

<p>Teachers using AP exams for tests should not be an unreasonable expectation since that is the best way to gauge how well a student is doing. The whole “the exams are publically available excuse” is no longer valid since you dishonorably took the exam thinking that no one would notice. Your best option is to tell the truth even though that means you did cheat.</p>

12

<p>You’re under no obligation to tell the professor that you’ve seen the PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE AP test that she’s giving out before you take the test. Just tell her that you and your tutor happened to go over it while studying for the AP.</p>

13

<p>Hey nd09,</p>

<p>This may not be a matter for the teacher, but it’s not like we memorized the answer key - A,E, etc.
We spent hours going over a number of pratice tests, making sure we understand every question, and found likely that the 2005 released exam will be the one. I had to do most of the work for the multiple choices, cancelling out, drawing graphs, because of course I didn’t memorize the answer key.</p>

<p>Thank you for explaining the “other view of the story,” as it is very hard from my perspective to judge to what extent this situation is fair/unfair, or possibly cheating.</p>

14

<p>I’d be upfront about it and tell the truth only because I think you did nothing wrong. Many prep books will use released exams. You studied for APEcon by studying an old test, a common practice in AP land. You used public domain to study and did nothing immoral or wrong. If the exam she gave you was supposed be one nobody had seen, she shouldn’t have given you an exam released to the public.</p>

15

<p>Exactly as everyone has said, you guys were just using the resources available. Before my final in AP Calc, I quite literally memorized how to do almost every problem since like the early 1990’s. Even though our teacher used different numbers a lot of the methods of solving the questions were exactly the same. It’s not very fair OR just to penalize you guys just because you took the extra time to study old tests. It was for practice. I think trying to avoid this fact would just make you guys seem sketchy like you were purposefully trying to memorize every question. With some luck and guesswork you guys picked the right test, hooray. Besides the teacher shouldn’t be ripping off exact problems of a publicly accessible test anyway… there are plenty of ways to make AP level questions without just giving you guys a copy. I understand if it was for practice (we used to do those every day in AP Stats), but for a grade-it just seems like he/she is taking an easy way out.</p>