<p>The Universities are the real losers here, but don’t think the cheating is so pervasive in the USA as to create greater enforcement. Cheating is so pervasive in China, however, that the Ivies have begun the expensive process of actually interviewing each applicant (to see if they actually speak English) and then having each applicant write an essay on the spot. The universities can’t yet crack the code on the CB, because the CB runs this, but all they have to say is that they will administer their own tests or only rely on the ACT and then, boom, the CB will spend what it takes to have a fair test. The mere threat that the UC system would drop the SAT was enough to bring the CB to heel in prior years.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>That occurred to me too. That’s why I specified teachers and adult educators in my question about SAT cheating.</p>
<p>Yes kelly. Right idea, but I doubt the colleges would pay for the testing system. But I do think pressure has to put on the CB by the colleges somehow, with threats to stop using the CB’s tests. Students and their parents will follow what the colleges ask for. CB is a service -provider with little or no competition. The customer, who can call he shots, is the college. Some have suggested that the colleges threaten to switch over to the ACT, or make the tests optional.</p>
<p>“Parents may very well be funding some of the imposter cheating.
Parents are putting pressure on kids. Parents are not guiding kids to find appropriate means to do their best, and seek appropriate colleges for that best.”</p>
<p>Parents write “personal statements” and essays for the kids all the time (or they hire college “counselors” to essentially do that for them. </p>
<p>The colleges are just fine with this situation. Not a single one has complained about the cheating. Not a single one has come forward to say it made any difference in admissions. And hey, these parents are about to fork over $220K+, wink wink, nudge, nudge.</p>
<p>“Yes, Great Neck families are angry at the association.”</p>
<p>I’m sure they’re extremely angry it’s in the papers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You may be right and I agree that until major players decide to contend with or push back on ETS, things won’t change. But knowing the industry as I do, if anything was going to change it won’t be in the headlines, they aren’t going to be publicly announcing their stance and making a scene with it. What I can see happening is for them to put pressure on ETS, and/or declining to participate (as many other schools have already chosen to do, but not sufficiently influential ones yet).</p>
<p>So many things wrong with college admissions in the US now…maybe another house of cards that has to fall. I’m just so thankful we avoided this whole nonsense by staying north of the border in Canada.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Colleges are apparently content to let ETS/CB deal with the general problem of SAT security and cheating. But I bet most colleges would care a lot if they were informed that an individual student enrolled at their school had cheated on the SAT to gain admission. Harvard states it this way:</p>
<p>“Occasionally candidates for admission make inaccurate or incomplete statements or submit false materials in connection with their applications. In most cases, these misrepresentations or omissions are discovered during the admission process and the application is rejected. If a misrepresentation or omission is discovered after a student has registered, or registered and completed courses, the offer of admission ordinarily will be rescinded, the course credit and grades will be revoked, and the student will be required to leave the College. If discovery occurs after a degree has been awarded, the offer of admission ordinarily will be rescinded, and the course credit, grades, and degree will be revoked.” </p>
<p>[Admission</a> Materials Handbook for Students 2010-2011](<a href=“http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k69286&pageid=icb.page355885]Admission”>http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k69286&pageid=icb.page355885)</p>
<p>I believe the colleges WOULD care…ETS is not telling them about cheaters.</p>
<p>I’ve worked in the admissions world for several years. There have been rumors for quite a while about standardized test cheating, especially in Long Island and Florida. But they were just that: rumors. Universities don’t have a lot of leverage with unsubstantiated rumors (that are “in general” - not alleged to a specific candidate) relating to a test we do not administer.</p>
<p>It’s also difficult to sort out small gossip spurred by jealousy (Oh, so-and-so must have cheated - they’re not that smart!) from something of real concern. I do believe that every admissions person I know would contact College Board and/or a HS principal and guidance counselor if we ever had hard evidence that cheating had gone on. </p>
<p>Several years ago I remember College Board notified us that an applicant in Florida was caught cheating on the SAT (had someone else take the test for him/her). The student had scored something like a 1150 and 1200, taking the test at his/her home HS. S/he then took the test in another county at a different high school 60+ miles away and scored a 1400. </p>
<p>Remarkably, if I remember correctly, it was the applicant’s high school guidance counselor who had been suspicious of the student’s sudden score increase while taking it at another site, and had been the one to call CB with some concerns.</p>
<p>It does surprise me that CB or ETS hasn’t invested some major $$ in fraud detection/pattern software. I think one of the things that has hampered that work is that the SAT and ACT really are to a large part coachable in many ways. It is quite possible for one candidate to go from 600/600/600 to 720/720/720 without it indicating any cheating or fraud. To my knowledge most fraud softwares are built around common patterns and “rules” – it is likely near impossible to account for these score changes without flagging every other candidate it seems.</p>
<p>I think the biggest red flag, for CBS and ETS to consider, is when students register on time, and with space available, to take a test at a high school other than their own, when their own high school offers the test, or if they register to take a test say 50+ miles away from home.</p>
<p>
I know kids who went away for family stuff or visiting colleges, and took the test while there. So even if that were not the case, it could be explained away as that.</p>
<p>The other big discrepancy is when high test scores do not correlate with grades earned over a long period of time.</p>
<p>Maybe that is why some colleges (such as Georgetown) insist in receiving every test score, even though they say they only consider the highest.</p>
<p>^^^ true, and wouldn’t it be interesting to figure out haw many students don’t follow that requirement either!</p>
<p>I agree with born2dance about students taking the test more than 50 miles from home. I know someone who took the test on the other side of the country from where they live. The reason was the family arranged to take a family vacation and they forgot to check the SAT exam dates. The student wanted to sit for the SAT again. He arranged to take the exam at a testing center near where they were on vacation. It had nothing to do with trying to cheat.</p>
<p>*The other big discrepancy is when high test scores do not correlate with grades earned over a long period of time. *</p>
<p>there are threads and threads on here about students with low GPA and high test scores, it is not at all uncommon for many reasons.</p>
<p>“Parents may very well be funding some of the imposter cheating.”</p>
<p>Without a doubt! I don’t believe for a second that most of these parents didn’t know. Some neighborhoods on Long Island are so phony.</p>
<p>Interesting article on app/test cheating in China:</p>
<p>[Asia’s</a> rampant cheating problem - GlobalPost - Salon.com](<a href=“http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/asias_rampant_cheating_problem/]Asia’s”>http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/asias_rampant_cheating_problem/)</p>
<p>My kids have occasionally been forced to take the SAT at a different school because they (we) forgot to sign up early enough.</p>
<p>“The other big discrepancy is when high test scores do not correlate with grades earned over a long period of time.”</p>
<p>Grades are not a perfect measure, but people who’ve taught a student can recognize (if they care to) that there’s a disconnect between the student’s ability and the score. I had terrible grades and a good SAT score, but the teachers who failed me could tell I was troubled, not dumb. In other circumstances, a teacher would know to be suspicious. The question, for me, is whether the school wants to pay attention to this kind of thing.</p>
<p>2b, there is often a large discrepancy between scores and grade.</p>
<p>Think about the kids with straight As who have low scores…maybe the curriculum is not so rigorous, and that is exposed come test time? Or maybe the school has rampant grade inflation, where you get a B for merely showing up. and an A if you do any work at all?</p>
<p>Or maybe the teacher gives students lots of points for things that do not reflect actual learning? At my sons’ high school, one teacher graded based upon grades on tests and papers only; another teacher in the same department graded on “notebook checks” and let students have “extra credit” for things like making a poster or a diorama or helping clean the blackboards (hello? this is 11th grade?). So in this class, Jenny gets an A…she got Bs and Cs on the assigned work and papers and tests etc., but she got perfect scores for her neat and pretty notebooks, and she got an extra point every day for blackboard duty, and she did a lovely poster showing portraits of three female authors with their names and best known book, and she dutifully turned in every homework assignment. But she only received a 530 CR…</p>
<p>Of course the converse is often true as well. Dave never does his daily homework assignments, or never turns them in; he is certainly not in to doing all the little extra credit type things. But he is learning a lot nonetheless…so his grade in the class might be a B or even a C. He might do really well on the tests or papers that he does do…but he doesn’t do all of them. But when he takes a standardized test, his actual learning is reflected. So a kid with a C+ in math scores well above 700 (yes, I have one of those).</p>
<p>So looking to see if the scores and grades correlate does not work perfectly in either direction.</p>
<p>How sad that the adults in this young man’s life would allow him to go on television to express his immature views. Years ago, a young man I know stole a national standardized test. The high school was a test site and had the tests stored in a room that was used by an AP self-study group. The young man took a test … and he encouraged the other students to do so, as well. He was the only one who took a test, and the others reported him to the administration. The seal was never broken on the test. The young man was punished, of course … although it probably would have been a more stringent punishment had the school not been so stupid as to leave the tests in that room. Anyway, I had many, many conversations with the young man. At first, he truly did not understand what was wrong with what he did. He was a relatively poor kid at a ho-hum public school who wanted to have what he perceived that privileged kids have … he figured he wasn’t hurting anyone, and it would put him on an even playing field with kids who could afford to have test prep. It took a very long time before he understood the error of his ways, and after quite a few years he has a very highly developed understanding of right and wrong. He is an ethical man.</p>
<p>I am one of those who feel things happen for a reason. Had he not done what he did when he did it, he might not have had the adults in his life who were there to help him understand the error of his ways. He could have gone on to be an unscrupulous, unethical man. Instead, over time - with the help of adults committed to helping him mature - he developed morals and ethics. The point is, someone should tell the kid to shut up … and then work on TEACHING him what he clearly does not yet understand. I don’t care how smart he is. He is missing some education that he truly needs.</p>