Cheating happens. Fortunately, not all students feel overwhelmed by the nasty old system. Every year, the Harvard Crimson conducts [an anonymous, voluntary survey](The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2018 By the Numbers) of incoming freshies. Social scientists like these kind of surveys because there is nothing to be gained from lying. Only 10% of the class of 2018 admits to cheating on exams. The other 90% must have been having better days than Katniss and Peeta.
“The ends justify the means.” - Niccolo Macchiavelli.
Seriously though, I don’t really cheat other than on homeworks and take home tests/quizzes. In AP Econ we basically have group tests because the teacher doesn’t give a crap if we talk. And on standardized tests I go ahead/behind of the section lol no big deal
Doesn’t that set off alarm bells back at College Board headquarters?
It should set off alarm bells at the high school and among the parents.
Ha Ha. True dat.
But, doesn’t the College Board monitor results in the interest of continued certification of that school’s AP classes?
@Wasatchwriter - re. that Harvard survey - I’m kind of upset that even as many as 10% of entering freshmen admitted to cheating on exams! At Harvard! A friend of mine on faculty at MIT caught a girl cheating on a biology exam and her parents called the Dean to complain about this persecution (!) and any observer just knows this person clearly cheated her way through HS and took a spot at MIT away from someone more deserving.
I teach HS and I have caught students plagiarizing much more often than cheating in person. I give all open-notes exams and mostly with questions known ahead of time [to everyone]. It’s pretty clear who knows their stuff and who does not. I only allow (and I check) the person’s own handwritten work (unless a special circumstance like broken wrist) as the “open-notes” to be consulted. No re-takes, etc. Any student who puts in the work will be able to succeed.
One plagiarized lab report was ridiculous - so obviously written by a tutor, and then when I emailed the mother, she responded, “well we did spend quite a lot on the tutor’s time that weekend; he worked on the report for over ten hours” - completely oblivious!
@JustOneDad Lol, my guess is that they don’t give a single hoot about each school’s certification.
At the end of the day, they just want their money.
Cheating is unconscionable and victimizes the innocent. I’m 100% against it and aghast that anyone would even theoretically defend cheaters.
The fact of the matter is that people that cheat in high school will cheat in college. Old habits die hard, and while it will be harder to cheat in college I’m sure that students get away with it. It’s ridiculous how most students spend more time, time that the could actually use to study, to plan how they’re going to cheat on the test. I’m a dual enrollment student, and even in the college classes students cheat. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and they never get caught!! While i am sleep deprived and study my butt off to learn something the teacher never taught for the final to get an 89, there goes the cheater to get a perfect score after having a good nights rest and watching netflix.
Another thing, low ap scores can be justified by so many reasons by both teachers and students. Students and teachers can blame it on testing anxiety, but shouldn’t it raise some flags when a student gets an A in the class and a 1 in the AP test? My solution to this: Based on the AP score, the final grade in the class should be change to reflect that of the AP score.
That oversimplifies things and isn’t a fair solution. Not every person who does poorly on an AP exam cheats their way through the class. I know plenty of people who didn’t cheat at all but didn’t pass the exam. Some people have problems testing, and sometimes for whatever reason they do poorly on the test depending on the questions. Not to mention that AP scores don’t come out until July, which is far past when final grades are due.
I’m gonna be completely honest. Everyone has done it at one point in their school life. So I’m pretty indifferent about it if someone does it once in a blue moon tbh. But if someone does it for every test, that’s outrageous. It gets me mad when people say that they’ll be robbed of education. Like no they won’t, they’ll take up spots in colleges even though someone else deserved it more.
And on a more general note: do we want doctors, pilots, etc., people who are responsible for the lives of others, who got to there not by learning what they needed to to get there, but by cheating their way up the ranks?
It’s not a justifiable behavior - integrity matters. Cheating goes against everything education in general is supposed to stand for, and it is quite despicable that it is so engrained into out education system.
I knew a girl in high school who had been reprimanded twice for cheating - once in AP Biology and once in AP Chemistry. She always talked about she wanted to be a doctor and I found that absolutely terrifying. While I highly doubt she’ll actually make it to medical school (aside from her questionable moral leanings, she also wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box) - but just the idea that someone who had to cheat in a high school science class to get by could very possibly become a doctor irritates (and scares) me to no end.
With that said, I think that cheating is a hell of a lot of (pointless) work. It seems like a gamble more than anything. I mean, even during high stakes examinations, the consequence of failing pales in comparison to the gravity of getting caught cheating. It is compounded by the fact that cheating for a lot of people (like any other bad habit) gets easier each time, and that’s what gets people in the end. And that’s why cheating is such a big deal when it comes to college and graduate school admissions - people never see a cheating offense as a one time thing/isolated incident. They see it as a long term pattern that invalidates all accomplishments – that the reported offense was merely the first time one was caught.
@1234PJ4321 I agree with you. I admit that I cheated in 7th grade once. It was my first and my only time. In a way, I am glad that my teacher caught me. I never did it again. I don’t know where I would have be now had it not been for her. Everyone has done it at some point I am sure.
We had several incidents of plagiarism in dual enrollment classes recently. Neither institution-- not the junior college nor the high school-- assessed harsh penalties. The kids involved failed the class and had to repeat it, period. It didn’t even keep them from holding leadership positions in school-based groups (sports, band, language honor society).
It makes it very hard to teach the younger kids why cheating is a bad idea when their role models do it and it goes unpunished.
My grade has a particular girl and her group of friends who cheat excessively. The girl used her phone to look up any and all assignments, quizzes, tests, and exams in her AP USH and Chemistry classes and she also does so in other classes. She’s very open about her dreams and aspirations. She has around a 3.7, plans on getting into Harvard or Yale (you know, whichever one ends up topping the USNews ranking in 2016), and she wants to be a plastic surgeon. It’s just laughable at this point because she claims her anxiety keeps her from studying, but how does she plan on coping with her anxiety in med school?
Isn’t that a rather big assumption to make? You assume everyone is a cheater because you did?
I feel you all on your opinions and ideas about the matter. There is someone currently in my class rank who is a cheater. His whole family is – they bribe and cheat and lie to get the rank they want.
Yet I am beating him. So no- cheaters do NOT win in the end. In fact, they lose in a big way. Sure, you can’t always stop them from doing what they do, but there is a method to my madness.
I study extremely hard and do my best to get perfect grades and perfect scores on tests. So EVEN if he cheats, I’ll never bite the dust because of it.
In this specific scenario though, the teachers have all been made aware because he slipped up ONE time and it ruined everything.
A math teacher caught him take photos of a test and it went downhill from there. Now all the teachers are on the look out, and things are not the same.
I didn’t even need to turn him in. The cycle began by its own, and that’s my way of proving that yes, they will get caught in the long run. Just remember, the ones who keep their morals and study purely based on ethics and their brain, will win in the end and achieve the glory. A cheater, or someone who lies and doesn’t deserve their grades, will end up being revealed.
That’s my input based on personal experience.
My view, if you cheat you’re probably going to struggle a lot later on in life, but my view on it is that if you cheat and don’t get caught you sorta deserve it in a way since you were skillful enough to get caught, but if you get caught you deserve all the consequences.
People are so going to hate me 
^ Let’s hope you don’t get a doctor who “deserved” his medical degree that way.