Another Cheating Scandal

Ahhhh, the American judicial system and its "encouragement" to settle. My brother was recently selected to be on the jury of several potential lawsuits. He sat, waited and was dismissed a few days later after all lawsuits for which he was considered were "settled."

The guy who set it up was Chinese and returned to China...that's what the article said.

This whole cheating thing is why schools make you interview in person with a member of adcom and show proof of who you are. I've read of two Chinese students who probably cheated on the GMAT and then had another Chinese friend of theirs interview for them. Not to be racist but to Americans, all Chinese/Indians kinda look alike from a 1" photo.

I feel really bad for the Indian/Chinese who don't cheat and get screwed because they get a respectable 720 unlike a peer with a 750+. But part of me is also happy that the Indian/Chinese score so well. Think about it, the schools want that "average" GMAT so picking up a few high foreign scores then gives Americans with a 660 a chance since it'll even out. The Chinese/Indian actually help round out the class because you can pick the American with a lower score but tons of leadership potential.

... stating 'not to be racist' does not prevent a statement from being racist.

What you said above can be generalized to pretty much every race/country and not just to Chinese/Indians.

it's natural to see lot of angry and say persecute them all. But some tend to be innocent victims too -- like me. this news which ruined my day, and it's weird. I did not even know until something clicked in my head when i saw the news. i wrote gmat some time ago, and studied veyr diligently, on the day of the exam another forum member sugested that i do the online exam in scoretop which is a great exam like mgmat. i just trusted him, and since i had a few hours to go to the exam, thought i'd do one more "fresh" exam (i had finished OG. gmatprep etc) - registered in a hurry and checked into the site (i dint read everything - its a dense site and i figured it's like any other, i had never visited them before, and recommendation was trustworthy..). once checked in, i realized there was no online exam - it was just some lot of practice questions in which i had no interest. I thought i fell to another misleading site, ignored it and walked away. that was it, i had pretty much 0 visits (excpet register and check) and 0 participation.

when i saw the article yday, i chcked my email to see if that was the company - and oops, it was.

no one needs to sympathize but you know, it's not that all of us read every little disclaimer on every site. when you are in the fever of gmat, you trust others recommendations and sometimes register - i pay for all my materials, never share illegally, and now it turns out that the fact i paid for a service thinking its legit is actually making me illegal..all i wanted was one more online exam so i could practice before the real one!

in any case how many people even on this forum consider each question, see if itis legal, answer only if legal etc?? how do we even know..


sigh...

Sorry to hear your predicament.

Make sure whether you were member of the paid part or not. If it is for the regular forums then scoretop was not any vicious..it was just like gmatclub gmat section. Although, now "Holier Than Thou" attitude is spilling over everywhere, but truth be told , majority of the members of any particular forum were member of all the popular forums ( gmatclub, sentencecorrection.com, scoretop, testmagic)..but usually for the unpaid sections.

But for the paid ones ( VIP section), there were different forums with restricted access! Now many might have registered themselves in haste, without looking at the feedbacks in net or even without realizing the forum admin's claim...then I don't know what will be the decision.

see, that is the thing, i paid because in a hurry to do a test i thought it was another paid service just like all the others. but i hope they will see what actually happened - i.e. i did not use anything and walked away from it immedately. i never visited it again, never posted - actually i had no idea it had even unwanted material, while no one needs to suppot my ignorance, seeing my actvitiy on the site enough to show that i did nothng with the registration.

there is nothing cool about it we will see what happens, i think i have clear evidence to show i did not use the service in any way except register.

sigh again...

I feel bad for most of the people...I dont think that they will go after 1000+ test takers. I am sure there are people who knew they were posting and discussing live questions and probably thought it was a great advantage. Those are the ones I have no sympathy for and think those are the ones that should have action taken against them.

Adcoms really aren't that paranoid... they interview you so that they can get sense of how you carry yourself in person, whether or not you seem like the right cultural fit for the school and to give you the opportunity to highlight areas of your background you may not have in your application, and in general to get a sense of who you are. They don't interview because they are worried you cheated. If that were the case, the interview would consist of them checking your ID and giving you a test.

I actually don't think they'll go after people - I think its just a scare tactic (an effective one to be sure) to maintain the integrity of the test. GMAC doesn't say it on their site, but in fact, GMAC went after Lei as well as 5 "John Does", I suspect its those other 5 unnamed individuals who they care about.

I haven't yet signed up for PACER access (anyone have it through work?) but I found the case # and information, I want to see what the judge's opinion actually was. I may sign up today and just pay the 8c a page to find out - though they really rake you over the coals - you are charged 8c a page based on the number of pages that end up in your search - regardless of the number viewed.... given that I've never used the system I'd hate to make a mistake in my search.

that is my hope too, rhyme, you have no idea how much it sucks to be stuck in some ridiculous situaiton like this! is ther some way i can find this case # so i might check too? the 5 john do's might be the biggest contributors/sharers..who knows. as long as they see my poor 0 score for all activity i hope they will let me alone.

(frustrated soul)

If you all are only checking out the English websites, then you are only getting the half of it. Try searching for "GMAT 论坛" in google.cn and you will find a ton of websites in Chinese that are kind of like GMAT club, but with some extras. In addition to regular discussion areas, the websites also include sections where people give GMAT debriefs in which they try to regurgitate as many questions that they can remember from the test as they can and areas where you can download any GMAT book you can think of for free. To top it off, there is this whole patriotic tinge to it all. For example, I saw that someone had posted a "super" set of practice questions that I can only guess include some live ones. The person who posted them put a security code on the document an hid the code in his post so that if you couldn't read Chinese you couldn't find the code. The reason? To keep it away from the Indians! Not only was the original poster intent on protecting the document, but also subsequent posts were expressing the same sentiment. "Yes, we need to keep this away from the Indians." "Yeah, it should be for us Chinese only!" Funny, right?


GMAC needs to move on from scoretop and start focusing on sites like the ones mentioned above.

jasonc, you're right but the majority of foreign applicants are Chinese and Indian.

I was remembering pelihu's recommendation about smoozing and it was something like "I told people of the same ethnicity to not stay in the same circle/conversation because the IBs couldn't deferentiate them by the end of the night and they kind of blended together."

Yea, I'm one of the cheapos who never paid for any special feature of a website. And I never visited any other site besides gmatclub. I find it a little weird that all these test takers go to random websites to take practice tests. I prepared diligently, and efficiently which meant avoiding these bizarre websites where God-knows-who made the questions . I threw out the Kaplan book early in my prep and studied primarily from PR & MGMAT. When you sign up at some unheard of website and even drop a few bucks for it, I have to wonder whether there's more to it.

With that said, ALL scores of people who used that website should be voided. Knowingly, unknowingly, it doesn't make a difference. Whether the live questions were encountered on their test or not, people who saw those questions had a clear edge.

Rhyme- people were severely punished in the other scandals in recent times- the HBS one, where some applicants attempted to find out their decision through a hack on b-week and the Duke scandal-I think schools are trying to set an example and they "might" take some action on these people as well.

Don't know how long this process will take though. I would guess it will take GMAC sometime to verify to some degree that they've caught the right people. If they are going to cancel people's scores and let the schools know (and in my opinion, schools will take action based on this information), I would hope they take some time and confirm they've caught the right people.

I agree with the opinion over here that anyone who used scoretop deserves whatever happens, but it's also important to find the right people.

river, I noticed some statistics that you had put on the BW forums around where the users of the website originated from. Where did you get that information?

YJ: I think he got it from alexa.com

Case Number: 1:2007cv00605
Filed: June 21, 2007

https://dockets.justia.com/docket/court- ... id-218834/

You need to sign up for PACER access (I've just submitted my application) - I don't know what is up there yet - certainly a copy of the original complaint for sure (which I bet is interesting) but there's a good chance that there's little in terms of debate (I assume lei shin was 'in absentia').

If you do get a copy, feel free to share it -- its completely legal for you to do so: "The PACER system provides electronic access to case information from federal courts across the United States. The information gathered from the PACER system is a matter of public record and may be reproduced without permission"