Scoretop GMAT Cheating Controversy Grows
According to Business week, apparently 1 VIP member of Scoretop has already had his score canceled by 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! …the confidence you derive out of solving a seen problem is incomparable...
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."
The real crazy part is that they actually might not have a case and their careers could be pretty screwed: "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."
"The real crazy part is that they actually might not have a case and their careers could be pretty screwed"
Why should they have a case? I hope the cheaters are identified and penalized - scores cancelled and kicked out of school / admissions withdrawn.
so is this why the ivy kids in my summer class suck so much? they are actually dumber than me? i knew something was up.
the question is far greater than that, namely whether anyone who used this 'service' should have their MBA degrees rescinded. (they should.)
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Was this fraud or was it just people brain dumping after the exam. I sure hope GMAC intends to actually prove their claims before they start invalidating scores and ruining lives.
If a standardized test is required for Bschool then there should be a couple alternatives for people to use. GMAC acts and is a monopoly.
The question is how can GMAC identify the cheaters? It seems that they have the harddrives of ScoreTop.com, assuming no data was deleted by ScoreTop admins, there are two ways I can think of - one is to check email addresses of ScoreTop users against those who signed up for the GMAT (using the same addresses). However, a lot of people probably use a secondary email address to sign up for online forums and such, so this may not yield much fruit.
The other option is of course to do a thorough IP address lookup, then try to figure out who the IP addresses belonged to at the time (this was what, 2 years ago?) This'll not be easy.
Those people who used secondary email addresses and have ISPs with dynamic IP addresses - they'll get away scot free.
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