Today I took a test in AP Chemistry and I did really well on it but I also feel a little guilty because I knew the answers to 4 out of 28 of the questions beforehand. This is because I saw them on the internet in the course and exam description booklet thingy for the course. I was almost tempted to purposely get one of them wrong because I felt I had an unfair advantage. What would you do?
By the way I wasn’t trying to look up the answers to cheat, I just happened to see them when I was trying to find practice problems to study with. I’m curious how you all would feel if you already knew the answers to some questions.
You should be okay, you did absolutely nothing wrong from what I can tell. You spent time studying and did practice problems. I guess you kinda got rewarded with studying. If anything it would be the teacher’s fault for having questions that can be found so easily online.
If you just happened across questions that turned out to be on the test while studying, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. That happened a lot last year; my APUSH teacher would use some questions online and I would come across them while trying to find example questions.
I wouldn’t feel bad at all. This has happened to me a lot. I used the AMSCO prep book for APUSH because my teacher had it as a recommended book on his website and studied it before my tests and my teacher put nearly all the questions on the test. Also, this year I always look up practice tests for my honors chemistry test and they were very helpful, and then I realized my teacher got lazier as the year went on and started replicating the problems. I even told my mom and mentioned it to my guidance consoler cause I was feeling guilty. They told I was just using my resources and had nothing to feel guilty for. It was my extra studying that gave the advantage and thats nothing to feel bad about.
Thanks for the answers. I just feel weird when people ask me what I got and I got the highest score in the class, probably because of those 4 questions.
I think you are way too hard on yourself. You didn’t cheat.
It’s none of my business, but very few people have the same sense of fairness as you do, and it’s not to your advantage. You studied and were rewarded.
I think you are fine.
If it’s really eating at you, perhaps you could ask your teacher if they would prefer you avoid using that resource.
As a teacher: cheating would be looking for answers to the exam ahead of time.
Good luck is stumbling across the information, not realizing it would be on the test, and being able to remember it.
You LEARNED the material. You were just fortunate to stumble across it before you happened to be tested.
You did nothing wrong; the material is in the public domain and you were lucky enough to find it.