sebl,

You make some very interesting and valid points... I respectfully disagree with a few of them...

From the ETS Ad council to discourage cheating (see previous post for link):

80% of the country's best students cheated to get to the top of their class.
More than half the students surveyed said that they don't think cheating is a big deal.
95% of cheaters say they were not caught.
40% cheated on a quiz or a test
67% copied someone else's homework

I think being at the top of the class helps alot in getting into good schools (since class rank is based on GPA, it seems fairly likely that students are cheating on more than one instance to get to the top).

I've read somewhere between 7 and 17 percent of college students are repeat offenders. The fact that I can find alot of different surveys on this seems to indicate this is a rather widespread problem.

The Fairtest factsheet on the GMAT shows that schools like Harvard at one time even stopped using the GMAT because it was poor at predicting success (I must concede that Harvard reinstated their GMAT test later on after the GMAT added the writing sample, as I recall). Further, in my reading, I have found that a surprising number of schools (more than just a couple) are down grading the importance of tests like the SAT. (I will also concede that sometimes statistics can be manipulated).

The only message I'd like to put forth is that widespread cheating is not limited to one particular group or nationality. Hopefully, things will improve as more cheaters are caught. As some of the readings suggest, cheating appears to be a symptom of a more serious problem in society today (what is as troubling than the number of instances of cheating, is how many students don't see why this is big deal).

Here are a few interesting excerpts to consider:

From http://www.oakridger.com/stories/082702 ... 20047.html:

"Caperton said he hoped the writing exam -- included after the University of California system threatened to stop using the SAT -- would "serve as a call to educators to emphasize strong writing skills." The SAT's testing rival, the ACT, announced Monday it would offer an optional essay starting in 2004."

From http://www.fairtest.org:

"NEW FAIRTEST ANALYSIS FINDS:
MORE THAN 700 4-YEAR COLLEGES DO NOT USE SAT I OR ACT SCORES
TO ADMIT SUBSTANTIAL NUMBERS OF BACHELOR DEGREE APPLICANTS"

"Deemphasing standardized test scores is an excellent way to comply with the recent U.S. Supreme Court endorsement of 'holistic' admissions." The FairTest count is based on a systematic review of the College Board's 2003 College Handbook and other guide books, information posted on college and university websites, and interviews with school officials."

"Colleges and universities eliminate test score requirements for many reasons" explained Bob Schaeffer, FairTest's Public Education Director. "Many are concerned about the negative impact on race and gender equity that results from relying on test scores. Others recognize that high-priced coaching programs artificially boost the scores of students who can afford them. Most agree that scores from a three hour exam add little of value to an applicant's portfolio."

Sorry for taking this discussion off on a tangent... This is a really interesting (and addictive) discussion... But, I guess we should get back to the task at hand... getting through the GMAT!

sebl,

I think the strong conclusion that you put forward based on "inconclusive and phenomenic" evidence that I think is quite ridiculous. To me, your argument is indeed expressing jealousy and anger toward the chinese students who got high GMAT (especially in Math) scores and work really hard for that. (are angry because you think that they should not be better than you, when indeed they are! globally admitted)

Have you ever thought, how difficult for them to learn verbal section of the GMAT with their kind of writing, and is it possible that almost all of them cheat on the exam? (as most of them got high gmat).

I think the best way to get ahead (individually, or eventually collectively as a Nation) is to keep your eyes wide and firm on to ourself, focus on what we want to achieve, improve ourselves, and most of all, challenge ourselves to outperform our yesterday by today and our today by tomorrow, rather than picking on other people's proven strenghts/weaknesses and badmouthing them based on something that is not totally true/ valid as a support for your conclusion. Easy, if it's a strength, then admit it and learn from them (but you will never learn before accepting it truly), and if it's a weakness, don't capitalise on it and avoid it for your own good.

Seeing mistakes on others and criticise them are always easier than to do so on ourselves.

Cheating happens everywhere, how much? we dont know. That's why we call them cheating. Cheating carries in it a sense of LYING.

Hi Aonie and other guys

If anyone else had an easy time on the GMAT, what are his chances he will get into the top schools? i dont think its a big factor. GMAT is simply not an indicator. 800 GMATs get rejected. No one knows what the weight of GMAT is, but its said that 680+ is good enough.

GMAT is one of the components and definitely not a deal maker. our quality of experience, our essays,our academic record will speak for itself.

That said, we cannot deny the fact that chinese websites are doing it. if we can stop them, great.

As a side note; i would imagine that thousands of students take GMAT every month. I dont think a handful of chinese students can make a big difference to the percentile.Some GMAT tutors ( i know one who did) also take these tests. That should also affect the difficulty level of the exam, but it doesnt. Simply because of the huge database on which the percentile is based on

Sincerely
Praet

Interestingly, someone hacked into ETS in the past few years in at least occasion and downloaded the 700 level questions for both verbal and quant. These GMAT questions were then sold about 1.5 years ago on EBay for $20.


English was apparently not the first language of the seller because quite a few typos existed in both sections. The typos were not 'run of the mill' typos but suggested the source was not a native speaker. In downloading the files, a Chinese script appeared in the process.

Incidentally, EBay apparently shut down that offering after about 1-2 weeks.

Cheating is everywhere but Pearson has made it increasingly difficult to happen at the facility.[/list]

[quote="sebl"]I think that the B-schools should not look at the GMAT of the Chinese applicants at all. My guess is that the majority of the Chinese applicants cheat. At least that's what I've heard from credible sources.[/quote]


Conclusion- "I think that the B-schools should not look at the GMAT of the Chinese applicants at all"
Evidence - "At least that's what I've heard from credible sources."

The argument is a poor one which fails to validate some major assumptions and contains poorly defined terms. This would be more likely to show up as a 400 level question. Primary assumption is that the writers guess is an accurately demonstrating the actuality. What if the author formulates these guesses due to his/her mental instability and the guesses have no truth to them. The argument would fail to hold in that scenario.

Another major assumption that the author has made is that his/her guess is formed solely due to what he/she hears from 'credible' sources. What if the author has a slow, inefficient and primitive form of thinking and the guesses that he/she forms are based on his/her weak analytical skills. The argument would be weakened if this can be shown.

Another strong weakener to the argument would be a research study that shows that the credible sources that the author has chosen to hear from are not credible at all and that they are in fact a figment of his/her imagination which may be a from of hallucination.

In conclusion the argument is flawed and has several logical gaps that need to be clarified by the author to make the argument a more convincing one.
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Please refrain from making such general comments about communities in general. Cheating is a crime but it cannot be attributed to a set of people sharing the same ethnicity or by virtue of sharing the same citizenry. Hope this strong statement does not offend anyone but I find generalizations truly illogical.

I think the previous posters have safely established the fact that there are chinese who cheat and there are americans who cheat.

the conclusion i came to, <drum roll> is that chinese cheaters were more successful at cheating than the american ones. (ouch!)

seriously though, it is good to see that cheating is being addressed. but focusing so heavily on what nationality of people happened to exploit a system first is pretty provincial. where is your mba perspective on human nature?

it is a never ending game if you want to take specific incidents and to generalize on a culture negatively. and i must say americans are unfortunately not faring so well in the world in that respect either.

the rest of your long winded argument does not support your conclusion.
Going with your argument, modern chinese would be 'immoral' if they made the claim that 'cheating is not wrong'.

for the sake of paraphrasing you are saying americans are moral despite examples of cheating because they made the statement that 'cheating is wrong'. And ancient chinese may very well have been unable to make such a statement due to not having certain concepts (i find this ridiculous but not gonna argue ur sources). Well last time I checked (which mind you was a long time ago), in all MODERN Chinese institutions, cheating is forbidden and taught against.

why are you bringing this up anyway? whats your agenda? we are all against cheating here, discussion on whether the entire chinese race is being implied as immoral is quite irrelevant. You are merely establishing (false) grounds for sebl's pointlessly insensitive comments.

Read my post again. I was quoting sebl.

hey im with you airwolf. enjoyed ur AWA on sebl's post (wish all topics were that obvious and easy eh?).

when i said posters above, i meant above above a few times =)

cheers

-f