Am I the only one that finds Indian GMAT results, especially their performance on the verbal section, at least a little bit suspicious? I mean, this is a nation where police can be bought for a few hundred rupies and where politicians can be bought for a few hundred dollars. Why is GMAC so sure that their Indian test admins are so incorruptible? How secure are Indian facilities; does anyone know?
I just want to highlight the fact that I have absolutely no evidence supporting this allegation--it is based solely on suspicious Indian profiles that I've come across on gmatclub.com (individuals that can't put together coherent sentences and yet scored 95%+ on the verbal section). The closest piece of actual evidence is the fact that Indians, on average, score 55 points higher on the GMAT relative to Americans. Obviously this isn't very compelling.
Again, I'm not accusing any individual of cheating on the GMAT. I'm just expressing suspicion and I'm wondering if anyone else shares this sentiment.
As someone who is Indian and has given the GMAT, I do not agree with your assertions about cheating. My own experience, as well as the experience of friends, of taking the test involved the use of fairly stringent measures to ensure no cheating. This included steps such as not allowing any objects with the test-taker, video-recording of all test-takers, etc. I don't believe any additional steps are taken anywhere else in the world.
Now, let me give you my 2 cents on why Indians do so well in the test despite being ineloquent:
> Indians are fantastic at test-taking: From the day our parents decide to send us to pre-school to the day we graduate from university, life is a barrage of tests for an average mid-income Indian child. E.g., the entrance examination for admission to the most prestigious engineering schools in India sees over 400K applicants, for just a few thousand spots. Most people spend over 2 years taking additional classes beyond school (over 20 hours/week) preparing for such an exam. This preparation hones us for not just the particular exam, but also our ability to take ANY test.
> The GMAT tests English comprehension, not spoken/written English: For most Indians, English is the second language after their mother tongue. Thus, when many Indians read/speak/write English, they first translate it into their mother tongue before processing it in their mind. While this may not be a problem in comprehending, it does lead to many errors while speaking or writing in English. A classic example is, 'taking an exam' (correct) vs. 'giving an exam' (incorrect but very common in North India - based off translating a Hindi sentence into English without thinking about grammar)
I hope this partly answers some of your misconceptions about test-taking in India. We do have some rotten apples among us (who doesn't), but please don't let that color your impression of the entire 1.2 Billion of us.
Peace!
Yes, Indians cheat the system, and so do many others from that side of the world, particularly in china, korea, and so on. I know many indians who have admitted to me privately they indeed cheated and that the procter was paid $5000 US, which is about 6-7 months salary in India to ignore test takers who would either copy down the questions word for word or video tape the entire thing. And the video tape would be shown to a group charged $500 US per person 1 week in advance of test writing. I am also aware of the same practice occuring in Vietnam and Thailand. Typically the poorer the country, the more likely to look away they will do.
The issue is people don't see cheating as cheating in these nations. You have people who come from a culture where cheating is a way of life, cutting corners is viewed as being resourceful. You think they are going to stop now. What kind of culture views it as normal to scale a 5 story wall to help your child cheat a grade 10 statewide exam? If this is what the parents do, imagine what the kids do. You think they'll have an issue cheating the american test. They have been cheating from grade 1, they aren't going to stop at 28.
""They're going up to the window and they're rolling cheat sheets, rolling them into a ball and sending them in, or some have made them into Paper airplanes," says Lakshmi." "As a result of this extreme cheating, about 600 students were expelled. Two dozen parents were detained after being caught. Later, however, all were released."
You see NO ONE WAS PUNISHED. They were arrested and allowed to go back free into society. 600 students expelled but ask, why would 600 people even TRY to cheat? Because in the past cheating was ignored, only because the story caught fire internationally they had to do something to not look totally corrupt.
Ask yourself what kind of culture would view parents climbing 5 story walls risking death for cheating on an exam would not cheat on a far more important GMAT?
Does it make sense in your mind the Indian who can barely scrape together a coherent English sentence can outscore a unilingual north american?
"Top U.S. business schools canceled the admissions-test scores of 84 applicants and students -- including two enrolled at the University of Chicago and one who has graduated from Stanford University -- who allegedly supplied or accessed live exam questions posted on a Web site." All from china scoretop cheating. The problem is there are around 30 other sites like scoretop, plus cramming schools who give out the test before it is being done. This is why the percentiles keep going up. In fact for the SAT, korean cram school writers take the test in thailand, send it to korea in the timezone difference and the kids cheat the test. They had to cancel all test scores.
"The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which distributes the GMAT exam, sued Passion for copyright infringement after it posted "live" test questions from GMAT exams online and distributed PDFs from test books.
A Beijing court ordered Beijing Passion Consultancy Ltd on Nov 23 to pay a fine of 520,000 yuan for copyright infringement and publicly apologize for its actions.
Passion, a company that has trained around one third of Chinese students applying to the top 10 American business schools, said on Tuesday that it was sorry for selling GMAT materials without authorization. "
The average score in China is a 582. USA 532, Canada 565, finland 522 (finns are considered amongst the best educated in the world especially in math).
Now isn't it interesting how Vietnam has a 542 and Laos has a 383, cambodia a 338 when the countries are next door to each other and share common population? So once you go into vietnam its geniuses, but the neighbours are all dummies. Isn't it interesting how Korea has only a 475 yet is far richer and be able to afford more and study hard. Isn't it ineteresting that backwards Vietnam is tied with Japan, largely regarded as the leader of asia technologically and with money and prep. Then you have China with a 582. Mongolia, 474. How is it the poorer countries like China and Vietnam who traditionally perform worse than Korea and Japan beat them in US testing? They are all Asians aren't they? And they are all similar types of asian cultures.
nepal 478, pakistan 497, bangladesh 488, burma 462, afghanistan 307, india 577. So again you cross a border and magically people of a similar culture become geniuses, and it just so happens to correlate with cultures with widespread cheating is the most common.
Its just amazing how some fucking assholes crib about Indian performance, more so Asian performance across all forums and start what they are best at-racial attacks on Asians only for the reason they just don't have the ability to beat Asians at their own games. Firstly, all GMAT centers are well equipped with CCTVs monitoring candidates 24*7. There is absolutely no scope for cheating. Secondly, the reason why you feel Indians are scoring high and you are not is because you are a dickhead who cant understand the difference between written/spoken English and English comprehension. GMAT tests the latter, not the former. Thirdly, children in India and China have to learn the hard way right from the very beginning of their lives, when American children are busy spending their day at Mc Donalds eating burgers and growing fat. Something which Mr. Obama himself said a couple of years ago. Indians give CAT, a very similar exam to GMAT, an exam in which over 300000 people from India itself sit and admissions are not granted to those securing rank below 98 percentile in any of top 10 colleges. In another exam for engineering which is considered one of the toughest, only those who rank in the top 3000 out of 400000 get admissions. Lastly, the kind of language you used, which suggests you are a racist, shows the kind of upbringing you have had in what is supposedly, the most advanced country in the world. This is the standard you have even after being brought up in such an advanced nation. Shameless!!
Your belligerent rant is an emotional diatribe that doesn't address any of the comments, concerns or facts brought up in the thread. That said, please explain to this dickhead the difference between written/spoken English and English comprehension. How does one comprehend something that one is completely unfamiliar with. Please enlighten this stupid, fat American.
It is questionable. During my time in B-school, the Indians were, by far, the most unethical scums out of everyone. They constantly lied and I'm not sure they even realize how delusional they are, cheated their way on exams (yes even in B-school), and showed a lot of unethical behavior during recruiting. I have a difficult time trusting them.