GMAT Cheat

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Shutting Down a GMAT Cheat Sheet

    

A court order against a Web site that gave away test questions could land some B-school students in hot water

    

by
Louis Lavelle
    

    

More than 1,000 prospective MBA students who paid $30 to use a
now-defunct Web site to get a sneak peak at live questions from the
Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) before taking the exam may
have their scores canceled in coming weeks. For many, their B-school
dreams may be effectively over.

    

On June 20, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of
Virginia granted the test's publisher, the Graduate Management
Admission Council (GMAC), a $2.3 million judgment against the operator
of the site, Scoretop.com. GMAC has seized the site's domain name and
shut down the site, and is analyzing a hard drive containing payment
information.

    

GMAC said any students found to have used the Scoretop site will
have their test scores canceled, the schools that received them will be
notified, and the student will not be permitted to take the test again.
Since most top B-schools require the GMAT, the students will have
little chance of enrolling. "This is illegal," said Judy Phair, GMAC's
vice-president for communications. "We have a hard drive, and we're
going to be analyzing it. If you used the site and paid your $30 to
cheat, your scores will be canceled. They're in big trouble."

    

Small Advantage to Test Takers

    

GMAC sued the operator of the site, Lei Shi, for using it to
distribute copyrighted GMAT-related materials without GMAC's
permission. Shi, who has reportedly returned from the site's base in
Ohio to his native China, is under investigation by the FBI, GMAC says.
Shi, who did not have legal representation for the GMAC lawsuit, could
not be reached for comment.

    

While the consequences for students may be severe, the advantage
they gained by using Scoretop is almost inconsequential. Unlike other
GMAT test-prep sites, which use retired questions, Scoretop and others
claim to provide access to "live" questions that test takers might
encounter when they show up for the exam. Participants on the site
would debate the proper answers. But the GMAT uses a computer adaptive
format that generates a new test for every user based on responses to
previous questions from a stockpile that contains thousands of possible
questions. "Even if a site is illegally able to obtain some real
questions, it is extremely unlikely that a test taker will see the same
questions on the live exam," says Larry Rudner, GMAC vice-president for
research and development.

    

Scoretop has been in operation since 2003. Visitors to the Scoretop
Web site before it was shut down would have encountered posts from
happy users and a list of "test experiences," users' firsthand reports
about the most recent test questions. But on June 23, they found this
message from GMAC: "GMAC takes cheating very seriously, especially
attempts to obtain access to live test questions in advance of an exam.
We also take very seriously any unauthorized distribution of our
copyrighted GMAT preparation materials. If you are caught disclosing,
accessing, or using 'real' GMAT questions your GMAT score will be
cancelled [and] you may be subject to a civil lawsuit or criminal
prosecution."

    

The news about the cheating scandal was the talk of the annual GMAC
conference in Chicago over the weekend, where the organization's
President and CEO David Wilson described the latest developments for an
audience of 700.

    

It's unclear how individual schools will respond. More than 4,000
graduate management programs use the test as part of the admissions
process, but many of those using sites like Scoretop seek admission to
the most competitive programs. So the fallout is likely to be limited
to top schools.

    

Several schools, contacted June 23, said it was far too early to
determine what fate awaits students or prospective students whose
scores are canceled. "It's impossible to say at this point what that
means," said Ed Anderson, Duke's associate director of admissions.

    

Some Scoretop Users May Have MBAs

    

Joe Fox, director of MBA programs at Washington University's Olin
Business School, said a lot depends on what information GMAC can
provide about individual students, especially the frequency with which
they used the site. "There's an infraction, that's for sure," Fox said.
"At a minimum it flies in the face of our code of professional conduct.
We could do anything we wanted—from a slap on the wrist to expulsion
from the program—and we'd be well within our rights."

    

Since the Scoretop site has been in operation since 2003, it's
possible that students with tainted GMAT scores are in the application
process, currently enrolled, or already graduated. For those in the
application process, the applicants may be rejected, and for those
currently enrolled, expulsion is a possibility.

    

Several years ago, when a Chinese national was caught taking the
GMAT for dozens of prospective students, one Olin student who had the
test taken on his behalf was dismissed before he could complete his
degree, Fox said. That's a possibility this time around, too. "I think
it's fair to say we'll take this seriously," he added. "It could be the
end of the line."

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GMAT Cheating Controversy Grows

    

The number of students caught up is now more than 6,000, and the
testing company talks about who could have their scores canceled

    

by
Louis Lavelle
    

    

A cheating scandal that has engulfed the B-school world grew vastly
larger on June 27, when the Graduate Management Admission Council
(GMAC) said the number of prospective MBA students facing questions
about their entrance exams now totals more than 6,000—six times the
original estimate.

    

At the same time, GMAC tried to reassure the involved students that
only those who knowingly used the Scoretop.com Web site to cheat on the
Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will have their scores
canceled. Because most top B-schools require the GMAT, the students'
MBA dreams could be shattered.

    

The scandal erupted on June 23, when GMAC disclosed
(BusinessWeek.com, 6/23/08) it had won a legal judgment against the
Scoretop site in federal district court in Virginia. GMAC had accused
Scoretop of copyright infringement, saying the site had published
"live" GMAT questions—questions that were still currently in use by
GMAC, the test's publisher—and other copyrighted material. The court
awarded GMAC $2.3 million plus legal costs, and allowed GMAC to seize
Scoretop's domain name as well as a computer hard drive containing
payment and other data.

    

For prospective MBA students who used the Scoretop site to prepare
for the GMAT, the news was devastating. GMAC is analyzing the hard
drive and it vowed to cancel the scores of anyone who used the site to
cheat on the exam, prohibit them from retaking the test, and notify the
schools that received the tainted scores. That could mean rejection for
applicants, expulsion for current students, and unspecified sanctions
for graduates. "I am extremely stressed out," one GMAT test-taker who
used the Scoretop site wrote in a comment to BusinessWeek.com's
original story about the scandal. "I am so upset and worried right
now."

    

GMAC said June 27 it is working to put together a list of advice and
frequently asked questions concerning the controversy. It is likely to
be available on the company's Web site next week.

    

Schools Weigh How to Respond

    

Meanwhile, GMAC says the man behind Scoretop, Lei Shi, has left the
site's base in Aurora, Ohio, and returned to his native China, where he
reportedly has taken refuge in the city of Zibo in Shandong province.
Shi, who took the GMAT himself at least three times in 2002 and 2003,
could not be reached June 27, and was not represented in court on the
copyright infringement case.

    

Deans, MBA program heads, and admission directors at individual
B-schools are scrambling to figure out how they will respond when GMAC
begins canceling scores. Joe Fox, the head of the MBA programs at
Washington University's Olin Business School, has said a lot depends on
how much information is available about each student's use of the site,
but the school will take any allegations seriously, adding that
expulsion for current students is a possibility. In his blog, the dean
of University of Virginia's Darden School, Robert Bruner, said Darden
and its peer schools "will brook absolutely no cheating."

    

Stacey Kole, deputy dean for the full-time MBA program at the
University of Chicago, says a lack of hard evidence implicating someone
in actual cheating will make the decision-making process difficult.
"Without hard evidence, it's very hard to say you're going to throw
someone out," she says. "We don't have a problem taking action when we
know someone has cheated. I have a tough time taking action when I
don't know."

    

"Live" Questions

    

The GMAT, which is used by more than 4,000 graduate management
programs worldwide and has been administered more than 200,000 times,
is a computer-adaptive exam. By assembling a new test for every
test-taker from a pool of several thousand questions, it virtually
guarantees nobody gets the same test twice, or the same test as the
person sitting at the next computer terminal. GMAC develops new test
questions all the time—they cost GMAC about $2,400 each—and retires
those that have been in circulation.

    

The Scoretop site, unlike legitimate GMAT preparation companies such
as Kaplan or Manhattan GMAT, offered a VIP service for $30 for 30 days
that GMAC says gave visitors access to the "live" test questions.
Legitimate test-prep companies use retired questions that have been
legally purchased from GMAC.

    

It's unclear exactly how Scoretop obtained the live questions,
although at least some of them were posted by the site's users after
having taken the GMAT. It's also unclear whether everyone who used the
site knew the questions were live. The site described the questions as
being "fully owned by Scoretop [and] written by our own…tutors."

    

At the same time, though, many of the posts found on the site
strongly suggest visitors knew the questions were live. The messages
reference question "sets" and "JJs"—an acronym for "jungle juice"—which
refer to groups of live questions that have been reconstructed by
test-takers and posted on the site.

    

In one post cited by GMAC in its copyright infringement case,
"h3adsh0t" describes the value of the JJs as "inestimable," adding that
he saw "10-12 JJs [when I took the GMAT], word by word, and many of the
other questions felt very familiar." In a "post-exam debriefing" filed
by "sammi," he described how he "got 3 successive [math] questions, of
which all three were from scoretop Nov or Dec! …[T]he confidence you
derive out of solving a seen problem is incomparable."

    

Potential Score Cancellations

    

On June 27, a lawyer representing GMAC in the copyright infringement
case said that's the kind of electronic paper trail the organization is
looking for on the Scoretop hard drive and elsewhere. While the hard
drive contains payment information on VIP members, the lawyer, Robert
Burgoyne, says it's unlikely all VIP members will have their scores
canceled by GMAC. "GMAC isn't going to start canceling scores because
people are VIP members," he says. "We'll look for something that
actually links people to conduct they should have known was improper."

    

Burgoyne says this may include individuals who posted live questions
in "post-exam debriefings," those who accessed the debriefings, and
those who encountered Scoretop questions on the GMAT and reported that
on the site—even if there's no evidence they knew they were accessing
live questions on Scoretop prior to the exam.

    

GMAC spokeswoman Judy Phair says the number of individuals who paid
for VIP access now totals more than 6,000, a dramatic increase over the
1,000 that GMAC originally reported. The 6,000 were VIP members over
the five years of Scoretop's existence, so it's possible the number
includes many current applicants, current students, and MBA graduates.
Since all 6,000 had access to the live questions, all 6,000 are
potentially subject to score cancellations, although the exact number
who will face cancellation will not be known for at least several
weeks.

    

Nondisclosure Agreement

    

Many people who used the Scoretop site are already worried that
cancellation of their GMAT scores might derail their careers, and in BusinessWeek.com's MBA Forum many are threatening to sue GMAC if that happens.

    

But it appears they would have a hard time making a case. To register
for the test, prospective students must agree to GMAC's terms and
conditions, which include a confidentiality agreement prohibiting the
disclosure of test questions. To enter the test center, they must sign
an agreement that gives GMAC the authority to cancel test scores if the
test-taker discloses a question "in any form or by any means."

    

At the computer terminal itself, the test-taker must agree to a second, more detailed nondisclosure agreement. And in the 2008 GMAT Bulletin,
GMAC reserves the right to cancel scores for any misconduct, including
mere access to test content prior to the test, "even if a specific
examinee's actual access to disclosed test content cannot be confirmed
by GMAC."

twang1981

唉．．一想就来气．．

水仙低吟

怪不得现在还不换题库，GMAC现在忙着打官司和解决真题泄露问题，在想对策呢，唉～可怜了七月份考试的我，希望GMAC还没用来得及做什么大的变化比较好！