Well dear monkeys, it seems cheating is once again a hot news topic: about twenty people from the North Shore of Long Island, a very wealthy area, are facing criminal charges and arrests for paying others to take the SAT for them in their place.
My last post on this topic generated quite a bit of chatter, made more interesting when someone brought up the subject of Adderall. Some of you agreed with me, while others viewed using this prescription drug as simply taking advantage of the resources available to them. To those who take the latter position, I ask: would the same logic apply to these wealthy kids and their money? After all, they're simply using their resources to the fullest advantage.
In addition to that timely news piece, there have been a number of threads on this site that revolve around a now-familiar storyline: "I fudged/made up item x on my resume, am I screwed if people start asking questions?" A disturbingly large number of us seem content to take our chances. Those SAT cheaters were also content to take their chances, and they are currently suffering the consequences.
Some commentators are fretting that cheating isn't really considered "wrong" anymore by modern society. I'm not ready to believe that yet--look at the mockery heaped upon athletes who use steroids, the public outrage at people like Jon Corzine, the effort put into honest, hard work and study by all of us on this site.
I reiterate what I said last time: this "do whatever it takes to succeed, even if it means cheating" attitude is a bad habit to get into. You might even argue that parents and teachers have piled on so much stress and anxiety that it leads some of us to cheat to avoid disappointing them. And there may be some validity to that. But if you're on the fence about any of this, think very hard about whether it's worth it.
Understand that there are consequences, and they do apply to you. For every story you think you know about someone who got away with it (headline news or not), at least one other person got busted. Think about one of those stories you've heard, whether it worked out for the cheater or not. Cheaters are giving us finance professionals a bad reputation as it is. Don't add to it. We are better than that.
After all, we can't all be Jon Corzine.
"Well dear monkeys, it seems cheating is once again a hot news topic: about twenty people from the North Shore of Long Island, a very wealthy area, are facing criminal charges and arrests for paying others to take the SAT for them in their place."
Is this even possible? I thought they check your photo ID before letting you into the SAT testing room.
It's called a fake ID, or at least that's what they tell me
Who the fuk cares cheat as long as u succeed and make money. It's wall street not church dummies. If u want 2 b moral and help others join the boy scouts
Great article, but I disagree - I hate this confusion of Adderall somehow being considered cheating.
Cheating is wrong because you're reaping the rewards of something you didn't do. Examples of cheating include; having someone sit for the SAT in your place, lying on your resume, and copying test answers when you didn't study. These are all great examples of cheating because you are misrepresenting your accomplishments; you didn't score a 2400 on your SAT, you didn't complete that Hong Kong IB internship last summer and you weren't able to solve that problem on your test.
Adderall is a stimulant and in no way, shape, or form does the work for you - just like caffeine. The main effect is increasing your mental output per unit of input, maximizing human potential. Caffeine feels fairly similar to Adderall and has the same desired effects - the only difference is the socially accepted way to take the substance.
The only flaw I see, as you pointed out, is the fact that steroids effectively accomplish the same goal as Adderall and have been considered "cheating." I was going to refute this claim but now that I think about it, steroids shouldn't be considered cheating at all. Again, the steroids don't do the work for you, they just increase the output per unit of input. I don't know about you, but I want to see human achievement in it's highest possible form - why limit that by not using every means possible?
Steroids are rightly considered cheating because they are against the rules of the game. Performance-enhancing drugs are banned from most sports (at least on paper). It just doesn't help that the steroids issue with Major League Baseball went undiagnosed for years because home runs filled stadium seats and made money for the league.
Adderall is a prescription drug for people with actual, attention-deficit disorder. If you're using it when you haven't been diagnosed with it, that's not only unethical, I'm pretty sure that's also illegal. You don't need a prescription drug to get caffiene.
the reason cheating is bad has to do with the fact that it devalues competitive institutions, and makes them useless. The college admissions process becomes more of a shitshow without reliable SAT scores, which to some extent are an equalizer when comparing kids with different opportunities. Credit ratings are an excellent example of how undermining standard scoring fucks shit up. Note that you only have to cheat in spirit and not violate the letter of the rules to achieve this effect.
addie and steroid are bad for other reasons. One, in a relatively competitive world they lead to a nash equilibrium based on short-term benefits that is inferior in the long-term. In other words, you have to do it to be competitive, but its probably bad for you. Second, they destroy historical comparability. This is a problem when statistics are compared to historical numbers as key signalling devices (i.e. Barry Bonds is the the best because he hit more HR than anybody else). When stats are on some sort of adaptive/percentile scale, and not absolute (GPAs, SATs), the first problem becomes worse and the second lessens.
Look, if you're not going to get a perfect SAT/GMAT/[insert any standardized or any test here] score, it's ok--just do the best you can. If you parents see you bust your butt then that shouldn't be a factor. If it is, then your parents have some issues that they need to work out, and might want to realize that they aren't perfect either.
Putting the parent issue aside, I think a huge part of the issue comes from laziness. You're going to have to crack a book to learn something eventually, given that the pond becomes an ocean eventually. An "easy way out" attitude isn't going to really teach you anything--you can't even fail and learn from your failures (which is even more important then learning from your successes sometimes IMO).
And the worst part is you won't feel anything if you do well after cheating. Realize that some kids bust their butt to get a 1500/1550/1600 on the SAT and probably are jacked up when they get that. Someone handing you a piece of paper saying "that's your score" isn't going to give you any emotional reinforcement saying "ok...maybe I can do this". Keep in mind this applies to sports too, and is just as black and white.
It's a damn shame, but at the same time, I wouldn't really want to feel empty at the end of the day from literally doing NOTHING and not working for anything. It's tough to get emotionally invested in that.
LOL who uses fake IDs to cheat SATs these days? No wonder they got caught. They must have thought this was 1969. Even when I was in college, people used more cunning ways. LAWL just LAWL
i know someone took popped one for the gmat, and got less than 400... it's not cheating.
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Good post. For anyone that works honestly and is intelligent, cheaters--whether it be for college admission, grades, jobs, or anything else--are aggravating and may cost us an opportunity in the short run. However, in the long run, they are fucked. Who do you think gets fired first or who gets D's in their classes (assuming they don't cheat)--it's the people who are too stupid, lazy, or some combination of the two to get there on their own merit. They will get found out sooner or later, no matter how good they are at lying. So to all you honest people out there, take comfort (and a little schadenfreude) that the liars in our field (and there are many) will get their shit.
BTW.. I personally get a grin on my face when some d-bag poster on this site is freaking out that he is going to get busted for lying on his resume.
Ballers don't cheat, they produce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
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