Should GMAC cancel ScoreTop VIPs' scores?

And remind you, you are unknowingly promoting smoking by putting this picture in a public forum. I bet you favour "green" businesses.

"and then I could have said that you intend to promote smoking and that you are probably getting paid by some cigarette company for doing so."

This is getting hot...

hbs aspirant.. u have a valid point, though many here who have never used scoretop are making assumptions on what theyve read in the past few days, most of which has been extremely negative.. I wouldnt blame them for their reactions. They have worked extremely hard, and it hurts when someone cheats their way up...


As I said in my previous post, someone who can truly benefit from live questions is someone who takes the test while he is a member. Every month question pool is changed, that is exactly why GMAC doesnt allow a person two tests in the same month.

Anyone who takes his test much after his VIP membership has lapsed, will have received little.. Had he been a cheat he would have maximised his chances to get a better score by taking a test during his membership period.

Im sorry but this just an analogy, and I dont intend to catse doubt on the veracity of gmatclub. its only an argument... Many of us pay for tests on 800 score, or gmatclub etc.. We pay because we want additional practice. Now are we aware who has written these questions.. Obviously were not.. Now lets assume that gmac tommorow says that one of these sites had live questions , and people paid for this to cheat.. What were saying today for VIP members that one should have checked the veracity etc.. will again boil down to us.. This means that its unsafe to buy any additional practice from any site excepting GMAC, because ur never sure of the authenticity of the material.




Again I request all members, to not get personal.. Scoretop membership reflects the general trend.. That majority of the members wer Indian and Chinese ,reflects the general trend in applications. A large chunk of applicants are of Asian origin. The site membership just reflects the same.. Its not like .. "Membership is limited to cheats only... ".

When we make generic statement, we hurt so many who have worked extremely hard to get the score they worked for.. Its unfair to label an entire community as a cheat due to the folly of a few people... It hurts.. Im Indian.. Im working hard for the past few months on my GMAT... there are many others on the forum who are too, many of them may be chinese, many indian.. chinese burned, is a live example on Gmatclub, of someone who has contributed heavily in discussions , and he worked extremely jhard for his 730.. .. Lets not label communities ,.. Its a request..

I do agree with the above posters. If you are paying 30 dollars for 30 days of membership to just access a forum, you have to know what you are signing up for. If their investigation includes that it was obvious that you knew what you were signing then I agree all members should be investigated and most should be canceled. Why would anyone pay membership for limited access to a forum, (there are many free forums out there), unless there was something "special" about the forum.

perhaps, you didn't come across this yet, but GMATCLUB challenges is paid. More than twice the scoretop for 25 static set of questions.

Do I suspect them?? No, I just signed up, practiced. that's it. May be a mistake, but I never bothered to know PRAET's real identity before paying few dollars. Hypothetically, what if in future I am held accountable for doing financial transactions with PRAET???????

I read about a site called beatthegmat.com. Unfortunately, there were not many members there. They did however refer me to gmatclub, and the rest is history.

Let me give you piece of advice. Calm down before you make any arguments. For your benefit, you will sound more intelligent, innocent, and your arguments will be more cogent. Don't make blanket statements about everyone being racists.

As for the smoking picture. You can't be serious can you?

I was serious.

BTW, bring on some logical arguments, because all your posts, I see only blames or random talks.

hahaha

real classy buddy.

Nobody with any authority (moral or real) has suggested that all VIP members cheated. I am sure that many unwittingly had access to live or pirated questions. Other websites charge/charged for content on a subsciption basis (bellcurves), so mere VIP membership is NOT an indication of cheating. I believe that unless someone posted live questions or commented on questions that were announced as live or requested live questions, he/she will NOT be accused of cheating, much less punished. People who never visited ScoreTop can only speculate whether and to what extent it was clear that VIP membership bought access to live/unreleased questions.

I think it stands to reason that some cheaters will go unpunished, but at least they will KNOW that what they did was censurable.

Let's keep this discussion at the issues and refrain from the personal attacks guys.

This is one of the better forums out there because as a community, we care and support each other, not tear each down.

Anybody who has read up on this situation understands there are certainly different buckets the VIPs fall into, and let's not rush to judgment on anyone who says they didn't use the site to cheat.

~Sam

The GMAT challenges cost $79 only if you choose not to contribute to the community, or do not want to wait for them while you contribute to the community. 25 kudos + 100 posts is hardly difficult to achieve. I think it took me about 4 - 6 weeks and I learned so much by becoming invovled in the forums (and I hope I've helped some out as well).

The difference here is that you can search the forums (for free, not $30), and see that nowhere does anyone claim to post real gmat questions or even imply a certain question is "live". Don't even begin to equate GMATClub with ScoreTop.

Right or wrong, people can get in trouble for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, even with innocent intentions. We have a duty to protect ourselves from doing something bad and sometimes that means doing enough due dilligence to avoid a bad situation. I hope that this becomes a learning experience for those that signed up but didn't use the site and received no help. If it can't be proven someone actively cheated, they should not be punished, but wow, how nervous must those people be that are on the fringe right now and it's still unknown? Best of luck to those.

Perhaps I missed this too, but I don't remember it being like this a year ago. I think paying was the only option.

terp26: VIP memership was not just membership to some forum , but was actually paying 30$ for some 400 practice questions in Maths and Verbal sections, for a month.

Again scoretop also offered live online coaching for 250$ , and with so many members claiming to have reach 700 + scores, I believe it may have lured many to have participated assuming that this practice will help boost scores. They also offered essay editing services for a much lower price offered elsewhere. 30$ really wasnt much to even blink an eyelid.

Luckily for me , I was on scoretop, gmatclub and pagalguy.com, and gmatclub was probably the most active in terms of discussions then, and I moved on to this forum. I later realised scoretop is innactive but it didnt matter much as gmatclub was as good as it gets , in terms of free practice questions, and lots of discussions.

Thats my take.. I wouldnt blame many of them who unknowingly paid for VIP services to improve their scores, because many may have been lured by the services scoretop offered, and would have never imagined that scoretop was cheating.. It was so believable because the first page mentioned not to mention any live questions or questions from OG etc..

there's another issue here too: GMAC isn't only trying to punish the people who used scoretop, since there's really very little benefit to GMAC in that action alone; rather, they're trying to discourage others from providing live questions (the 2+ million dollar decision helps ensure that) and discourage others from visiting sites that advertise live questions (the canceling and banning for life ensures that, since the punishment is so over the top. if you're banned for life, your hopes at an MBA are basically gone. better to take the LSAT instead). Keeping that in mind, it's perfectly logical that GMAC would ban people, since it's the most effective deterrent that they have.

As to the ethical discussion of whether they should be punished or not, I think it really depends on how obvious it was that scoretop was making live questions available. if something on the website said 'pay us and we'll give you LIVE (LIVE! LIVE! LIVE!) questions' then it's pretty difficult to argue that people who paid didn't intend to cheat, even if they (supposedly) didn't look at the questions. As has been said before, the benefit to the VIP members was probably negligible because of the size of the question pool, making the actual question of cheating (in the sense of seeing questions on the exam that one had already seen) entirely moot.

If, on the other hand, there was little advertising of live questions done on the site, then it's perfectly reasonable to assume that people that paid are just doofuses/exactly like your standard mgmat or gmatclub or beatthegmat subscriber. in this case, they probably shouldn't be punished.

now, i never saw scoretop, so i don't know what the website looked like, but they probably wanted to advertise the heck out of the business of having live questions, because that would provide significant competitive advantage vis-a-vis other sites like gmatclub. if they didn't advertise them, they'd be running all the risk of having the questions without nearly as much revenue because fewer people would pay--which seems like bad business practice, and is basically implausible.

now, i think personally that GMAC is being unnecessarily heavy-handed, but they're trying to protect their business from current and future assailants, as well as from the GRE, and to do that they need to ensure their credibility with the schools. And they're within their rights, and it makes sense. the only thing we can hope will happen, really, is that more schools will take the GRE (as might happen) and that GMAC will harm its competitive position.

Now, I'm not 100% with you as to the reasoning, but I find it terribly difficult to give scoretop the benefit of the doubt that they did not advertise, be it directly or indirectly, that they were in possession of "live" questions.

With all the free stuff and more reputable practice material out there, why would one venture out to scoretop? I never paid for the gmatclub challenges, (sorry praet et al.) I just never thought they could be as good as the OG + supp.

The challenges are worth every penny. (https://www.gmatclub.com/tests) Over a 1,000 questions for $79, you can't beat that.

Listen, if the investigation shows that it was obvious that people who signed up would have been aware of the live questions, then people should be worried. However if you were unaware of that fact, then you are in the clear.

However if it was also obvious on the forum that there were live questions in the forum after you signed up, and it shows user activity , even if you had no intent beforehand, then that may be cause for you to be looked into further.

Exactly! I don't understand the uproar. So far, two people have admitted here on gmatclub that they bought the VIP package and both claimed that they were unaware of the "live" questions. If you were ignorant of the "live" questions on scoretop and/or stopped using immediately after you found out, I wouldn't worry. And if they force you to retest, then retest. What's the big deal?

If I found out that the 1000 series had "live" questions (which I'm unaware of & pretty certain that they don't since they're so poorly written) and that I was forced to retest, I'd say bring it on.

I agree completely. If you were a VIP member but didn't cheat, then don't worry about it. Even if you saw some JJs but didn't post/write about it, I bet the most that will happen to you is you'll have your test score revoked (I don't think this is likely).

The likely scenario is that the ones who posted questions, claimed they used/saw JJs, etc will have their test revoked, and potentially be banned.

Lots of guilty people will walk away free - and if you happen to be one of the innocent victims I'd think you'd rather have GMAC be strict and revoke test scores as needed => if you truly are innocent the mass score revokes will only benefit you. Yes, you may have to retake the GMAT, but since the cheaters with high scores will be taken out of the pool, your percentile will go up.

So while I don't want to make the blanket statement that 'if you don't want gmac to revoke as many scores as possible then you're likely guilty', for most cases thats probably true.
Yes I understand that retaking the test could be difficult for a variety of reasons even if you're innocent - cost, readiness, time, etc.