<p>You tell 'em, Stephen! On my last test, a girl was blatantly answering questions when the proctor was speaking and he told her to stop several times, but she never did. The proctors really don’t want to go through the effort of reporting people for cheating. One kid in my first testing room asked “Do we get bonus points for reporting people”, and though that was a joke, it may be useful for stopping cheaters. :P</p>
<p>Well students at our district take the test at a nearby community college where free wi-fi is VERY accessible. I know a few students who were checking definitions with their iphones during break somewhere random in the campus.</p>
<p>I am routinely offered $15K+ to take the GMAT for Ivy Leaguers who have good GPAs and sterling recommendations from prior bosses, but are crappy testers. It would have been way easier to pull this off in paper-and-pencil test days (a la SAT), especially given the standard huge lecture-hall venue. That’s probably why they only used to offer $10K. Perhaps needless to say, I never would take any one up on it. For GMAT students, it seems to be all about the goal. Conversely, some SAT parents will spend over $200,000 to send their kid to a very average school, but think that spending a couple percent more on a good SAT tutor is “too expensive.” Umm, cost/benefit analysis much?
Speaking of cost/benefit, the testing companies did experiment with retinal scans in Texas for computerized exams. They ultimately decided as others have noted that it would be too expensive. The current GMAT/GRE environment seems uber-secure. No high school has any incentive (or resources) to pony up for top-notch SAT security. It’s pretty sad, in addition to the possibility of cheating, that such an important standardized test is administered in such a random way, even at the same school from one month to the next, and that the proctors never have read the supervisor’s manual, which they ought to, given the $100 they get for doing virtually nothing. There’s another book in that, perhaps “A Funny Thing Happened at the Testing Center”, or “Confessions of a Professional Test Taker.”</p>
<p>You said no to 15k?! …
Many times?!?</p>
<p>I must admit that getting offered 15K is really extreme and unexpected. Must have been REALLY desperate.</p>
<p>I learn a decent deal by being asian…</p>
<p>I was told that in Chinese SAT boot camps, they teach kids to just put a dot to mark answers (rather than filling in the whole bubble) during the reading and writing sections to save time. Since native Chinese find math really easy, they just fill in the bubbles after they finish their math sections. I suppose this only saves 30 seconds or so, so its low risk, low reward. I think it’s pretty useless though.</p>
<p>Asians also tend to have good access to old SATs from the QAS service. Of course, they still have to take the tests and study, but themes get recycled, so all tests are pretty much the same. You could also compile a good vocab list, since SAT vocab tends to be recycled as well.</p>
<p>Also, Adderall, so I’ve heard, does miracles.</p>
<p>If one wanted to really be like Ocean’s 13:
<em>Que jazz music with George Clooney narrating</em>
- Get glasses that have a very high quality camera in them.
- Figure out the proper dosage of some medication that will make the student extremely sick during the test.
- On test day, flip through entire test booklet. If the camera is fancy enough, then it could pick every single question on the test. Before walking into the room, take the medication.
- Become incredibly sick during first 15 minutes of test. Get excused from test.</p>
<p>Sick people (or other rare cases), at least in my school, are allowed to resume their test once they are better. This plan is obviously too far fetched because there is not a camera that can get EVERY single problem on the test in reading quality and if you can determine the right medication to get sick then you either found an anesthesiologist that will keep his/her mouth shut or you’re smart enough to get a good score on the SAT.
One might as well study.
But if someone tried this and was successful, it would be the funniest thing ever.</p>
<p>^Problem: In the first 15 minutes, you’re supposed to be working on your essay, and thus can’t flip any pages at all in the test booklet. A proctor with a pulse will catch you.</p>
<p>I turned down $10K and later $15K many times. These folks would have landed top venture capital jobs and made back $15K in a couple weeks two years down the line. They saw it as a smart investment, pure and simple.
Related, on the lack of moral compass: The scoretop.com website published live (still in use) GMAT questions until they were shut down. Students claimed they didn’t know this, even though it was blatantly advertised all over the site.
And some years ago, a lot of GRE centers in China were shut down, as students with fake IDs would go in to take the test every day, memorize the questions, and then have them solved and go in again. You’re only supposed to take it once a month, but the centers weren’t keeping track very well. The red flags came up when graduate students whose English was poor had gotten 800 on the Verbal! (and the GRE Verbal is way harder than the SAT, though I find the math actually easier, though slightly higher level with regards to some of the combinatorics stuff). That’s why they added an essay to the GRE, at least partially.</p>
<p>The consequences of cheating on the SAT are next to nothing. This is because, many times, they cannot prove that you were cheating. Your test score is canceled if you are suspected, but no report is sent to colleges. Colleges have no way of knowing why your score is canceled. Many people cancel for personal reasons–maybe you got sick, or decided you didn’t do well on that test? Anyways. The consequences are far too small.</p>
<p>I’ve had it implied that I should help people cheat. It’s quite a silly idea to me.</p>
<p>One could flip through the test before the writing section begins. And if one wanted to completely disregard the law, one could hack into the college board database, find out who will be proctoring the test, and then slip them a slow acting sedative a couple days before the test…
You might as well just study for the damn thing.</p>
<p>Would writing formulas on the back of my calculator be considered cheating? It would suck to have to wash all of that off…</p>
<p>@jimi123 Couldn’t you store the formulas in your calculator’s memory? Assuming you have a graphing calculator…</p>
<p>I do, but I don’t know how to do that :p</p>
<p>One time i was lucky enough to have a girl sitting near me have the same test as me. (everything was the same) except the experimental section. (so i knew which section NOT to waste my time on) and i went back and worked on other sections. My proctor was really laid back. Only walked around twice during the essay and section 2.</p>
<p>^ nice job, I’d probably be nervous to skip a section though even if I saw that it was experimental</p>
<p>Well there is this book, CB doesn’t want people to know about it. It has every SAT vocab word ever used. It is called “the dictionary”. All you have to do is copy the words on the book down, put it in your pocket, and just glance at it whenever you need help on the Math sections!</p>
<p>That is how I got 800 in math!</p>
<p>^ haha too funny</p>
<p>Just don’t do it. The risk is significantly higher than the reward. Also, morals, etc.</p>