Another Cheating Scandal

So GMAC finally decides to get off their lazy butts and do something about this. Thank God!!!! Now give me the seat of the cheater the bschools are going to expel. Everyone, add 1 to your gmat percentile. Except for you 99th percentiles!!! Don't be greedy!

Small advantage? Inconsequential? Yea, riiiiiiiight. In GMAC's infinite wisdom to make more money by making the test available every month, they opened the door for cheaters to put together a game plan and effectively help cheaters with money.

so that is why the percentiles decreased!! That would be a nice benefit kidderek. I'd like another percentage point.

Anyway I'd hate to be the cheaters that are waking up reading this. That's got to put a damper on their day. If you are that dumb to buy questions, let alone using your own name, then you deserve not to be in business school.

How about GMAC set up their own service pretending to offer "live" questions but they really just use it to gather their names:)

I have never heard of that site before, did you guys know about it?

I have seen the scoretop site, and if I recall, there was a disclaimer on the site stating that all questions were written by their own writers, etc.

I have also viewed the "VIP Section" and their sample sets, and let me tell you, they were very poorly written and I would be pretty shocked if they were real GMAT Questions; the quality was pretty sub-par. There were also no Official Answers if I remember correctly.

I certainly don't condone cheating, but I don't believe you can hold the people who logged in to their forum accountable if there was indeed a disclaimer stating that all questions were written in-house. If people were knowingly paying for real GMAT questions, then I say bust 'em.

~Sam

I've got to admit that I can feel some sympathy for the students who used the site. I've never heard of ScoreTop.com, but I can't help but wonder whether the students who used the site really knew that they were "cheating". Granted, ignorance is not an excuse, but unless the site specifically stated that they were providing current questions from active GMAT tests, how were its users to know that it was any different from something like Kaplan? I agree with having the scores invalidated even if no such disclaimer was provided. But banning the users from taking the GMAT ever again, thus ending their ability to attend Bschool? I realize that GMAC is trying to set an example here, but that seems unnecessarily harsh. As the article states, "While the consequences for students may be severe, the advantage they gained by using Scoretop is almost inconsequential." Unless the users knew they were cheating, GMACs efforts should be focused on punishing the site owner, not the users.

gosh with this cheatting stuff, everything and anything is cheating.

so is the gmatclub.com going to be next? we are gaining unfair advantage here from communicating between each other.

yeah I think this new cheating scandal is blown way out of proportion.

Never heard of the site. I was quite wary of all sites other than PR, Kaplan and MGMAT during my prep. They all got rave reviews and I planned on sticking to the basics.

However, someone posted a few months ago about some set of "live" questions floating around. Apparently, there's a Chinese company (maybe many?) that "rewards" their students to remember 1 or 2 questions verbatim, and these questions are used in their prep.

#1 No way in HELL. I'm an admin here and I try my best (and I know others do a better job than me) to clean up anything remotely close to being illegal/unethical

#2 Not blown out of proportion. It's more rampant than you think. I've had coworkers tell me about the situation.

Kidderek,

I remember hearing something like that as well. I think it was for more than just the GMAT as well, and if I remember correctly, the GMAC tried to come down hard on that prep service as well; although I am not sure if was a success.

I agree as well that prohibiting those students from taking the test again is pretty harsh, especially if they were not knowingly looking at "live" questions.

~Sam

"Scoretop and others claim to provide access to "live" questions that test takers might encounter when they show up for the exam."

So the culpability is already there. The question as to whether actual "live" questions were used is inconsequential. The people who joined the site did so with the intent to cheat.

If I were a gambling man, I'd bet that the questions were "live."

I agree if they claimed to provide access to real questions that they should be busted...

If there was a disclaimer saying all questions were written 'in-house', I am not so sure...

~Sam

oh crap........

If there is a disclaimer saying that all questions were written in house, then those students can't form the mental intent to break the law. If the disclaimer is just lip service, the student could still intend to cheat knowing the disclaimer was there just to provide "cover", but at that point, it becomes a proof issue.

How do you prove that a student really knew that the questions there were from the real GMAT if the website states "All of our questions are written by us. These are not real GMAT questions."

You can't negligently break a specific intent law. There are laws that require you to intend to do the action or cause a certain result. This situation is all about the intent of the visitor to the cheating website.

If a person intended to gain an advantage, that's not a person with integrity that a top school should want and each person should be kicked out or denied admission.

But I think it's GMAC pushing people around trying to make their case seem stronger than it really is. They may be right and these people intended to cheat...but unless I can see their proof these people intended to cheat, their case appears to be weak.

Well, this much is clear. Their scores are inflated b/c of the "live" questions and their scores should not be counted to their credit nor the schools averages.

How to go about punishing them? That's the gray area and I wouldn't know where to begin.

I wonder how many of them are re-testers with the scoretop questions being squeezed inbetween.

well obviously you should not punish people if they did not know questions were "live" but the article clearly stated that scoretop marketing them as such

Yup, but what if the questions weren't actually "live?" Then I suppose you dismiss the students based on unethical intent.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out...

I don't think that there will be much punishment, but I do think the threat sends an extremely strong message.

I guess time will tell.

~Sam