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Chinese Nationals Accused of Taking SATs For Others
Vadim Makarov writes: Fifteen Chinese nationals living in the U.S. have been charged with creating an elaborate scheme to take U.S. college entrance exams on behalf of students. For the past four years, the accused provided counterfeit Chinese passports to impostors, who sneaked into testing centers where they took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and others, while claiming to be someone else, according to a federal grand jury indictment. Special Agent in Charge John Kelleghan for Homeland Security Investigations of Philadelphia said: "These students were not only cheating their way into the university, they were also cheating their way through our nation's immigration system."
The SAT is one of the most useless measures of knowledge or capability the world has ever seen. Standardized tests don't work, they've never worked and we know they don't tell us about a persons true intelligence. So if China wants to take a SAT for me, go ahead.
all asians do look alike.
To an AF entrance exam for a friend's brother. He coulda been a nukular engineer. He wound up working the motor pool. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
People, who — like myself — have grown up under oppressive governments, see nothing wrong with cheating the State. They would not cheat a friend nor even a stranger, but government institutions are fair game. Moving to a free(er) country, we don't necessarily change that attitude.
Of course, the growing oppressiveness of American governments is not helping...
This is not meant to provide an excuse to the accused, but merely to explain, where they are coming from.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I find it mildly ironic that China's lengthy history of testing for public servants dating back millennia means they basically invented standardized testing...so they probably also invented cheating on standardized testing.
Just have a little ink pad at the desk where the tests are handed over... and have them put their left or right thumb print in a box next to the signature.
Then when you scan the documents in, capture the thumb print and enter it into a database.
If the same print shows up multiple times under different names then you know you have an issue.
Easy peasy.
I think I'm with Kin Jong Il when I say that I'm... so... roanry... why are people so stupid. Why can't them be intelligent... like me. :p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
In China cheating your way into school, cheating your way through school, and cheating your way to a degree is perfectly normal. Anybody who does not do this is looked down upon as being dumber than a Greek who goes to a hospital and does not realise he has to bribe the doctor before he has any hope of getting his big bleeding open bone fracture treated.
There were decades of twisted testing. Within graduate education world, I have personally met a large number of chinese nationals who barely could speak or write English, yet had perfect scores. Every graduate school knows this phenomena and this is the reason why certain asian related biases were formed. No doubt many of them are very smart people, but some just could not learn the language even in 3 or 4 years.
Many graduate schools no longer pay significant attention to certain test and yes, unofficial quotes have been created to counter numerous candidates with perfect scores.
I am waiting for further developments: perhaps a listing of thousands of people who benefited from imposter exam takers will be announced.
Not to play that card, but I've been hearing how my employer(s) can hire a PhD from China or India at half the price of an America or that we have to allow the, "cream of the crop," to enter the USA. But all I've heard about the education system from these two counties is that it's okay to cheat, in fact, it's expected in an apparent attempt to show you're serious about succeeding. And that's what its really about, succeeding at any cost. Glad to be so close to retirement and then I won't have to deal with this crap.
came across the border in Texas, much easier, and can do multiple times. No passport needed.
They all look a like.
I thought the serious exams (LSATs, MCATs) required thumbprint?
British Columbia had the problem of Chinese immigrants hiring others to take their driver's license test for them. It took yeas to try and sort out the cheters that had bought their driver's license this way and re-test them.
BUT, don't make the mistake that this sort of abuse is just a Chinese thing. Every race has members that will game the system for their benefit. It's just part of being human.
The SAT/GRE/etc. are terrible ways of selecting students; they can be specifically prepped for, students can cheat, they exclude otherwise-worthy students who don't "test" well, etc. But for better or worse, they are about the best available.
An "ideal" admissions method could somehow magically select the "best" students, but as any person who interviews and hires people can tell you, is rather difficult to do well. And impossible to do well on a mass scale. Employers, who have a huge vested interest in hiring only employees who will "work out" (given the utterly ridiculous costs of bringing somebody up to speed in a new workplace) haven't been able to figure this out yet. Colleges, who have a much smaller cost for admitting mediocre students, certainly aren't going to perfect this skill.
Given the cost/time/scale constraints of a better process, heavily weighting admissions decisions on SAT scores is not the worst compromise that could be made.
china is teach the test / solo work done as group
The fuckers that had these people take their exams? Should there not be some type of penalty for them as well?
I mean imagine if you'd do this and that person went on to become a CEO? Wait nevermind, I see where I went wrong, this is completely acceptable behavior for CEO's or politicians.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
So will that be the next can do ad for ITT? We only hire the hidden talented and capable...
HAHAHAHA!
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
The next time you read yet another news article comparing the rate of anything across different countries. It doesn't matter what the rate is; infant mortality, math proficiency, whatever. They're all reported by the various countries and the numbers are whatever the country wants to report.
Posting anonymously for the obvious .
I went to a tier one school for my city. All of the "smart kids" went there. However, my grades we so so. I graduated with a 3.3 GPA. I took the SAT three times. I was never able to break 500 on the math section. Strangely I did do a solid 600+ on the other sections. I never considered myself smart since it took me longer to actually learn things. My saving grace was public speaking ability and love of computers.
I went to a 3rd tier college masquerading as a 1st tier school (most schools in New York State do this) and got a comm degree because I had some goofy idea of being a TV producer in Hollywood. That dream imploded after I realized how miserable that lifestyle is. I graduated college with a paltry 3.3 GPA. That was on coasting and apathy.
I was fully prepared to join the military because if the super smart kids can't get jobs, why would me the 3.3 comm grad even get a real job?
At the last minute before I handed in the OCS papers, I got an interview at a very large company doing support and development for an internal proprietary app. Apparently my part time work at the on campus IT department meant something. My first real job out of college got me $60k a year. I moved to a big city. I worked the job for three years and recently they've promoted me to a new position making $105k a year. I paid off all of my student loans in the first three years by living frugally.
Meanwhile, all of those kids I knew who had better grades and scholarships than me are up to what nowadays? The majority of them got back onto the educational conveyor belt going to med or law school. The few success I know went into tech. Everyone else is up to their necks in student loan debt.
TL;DR, grades, SAT scores, and school do not mean anything in a deflationary economic environment. The traditionally "intelligent" don't succeed because they don't know how to hustle. Hustling or "selling skills" are far more important than some bubble test. When I look to hire new people, I look for the ones with interesting life stories. They're the ones that get it. Not some millennial with a gender studies degree.
This place being what it is, there's bound to be an attempt to paint this as related to the culture of the cheaters. But never forget that the quote "If you're not cheating, you're not trying" was made famous by Chicago Cubs player Mark Grace.
Don't sit next to me just because I'm asian. By the bruce lee band.
... wouldn't that be AWFUL. For non-whites... They'd have to live around their own kind, which would be just awful for them, wouldn't it.
Uh, you are "some millennial with a [communications] degree".
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Yeah.
The most famous of them is called - (Mike Ross) and is notorious for taking LSATs for US students and scoring quite high ;)
If you dont get at least 650 on the Quatitative, then you wont do well in STEM. That test is pretty basic.
A paper was retracted in the prestigious Science Journal yesterday because a grad student had faked the data for it. This was discovered by others analyzing the data and trying to reproduce it. Cheating endemic in school, but you cant fake your way in the real world.
Middle class Chinese could become comfortable civil servants if they did well on tests. This was the original aim of the SAT, as a gateway for the middle class into prestigious colleges. (Rural Chinese couldnt afford te time for the heavy memorization to take the tests.)
Teachers and administrators in Atlanta were sentanced to jail for altering test sheets on a massive scale. Rare that they have court cases.
A few years back a New York guy took tests for fellow students for a fee. paid his way through college before get causght. I forget his sentence.
Now we have Chinese grade farmers.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
The SAT exam centers should take candidate photos as well. When reporting your score, it will also provide a link where institution can verify student photo.
Don't be too impressed about "social intelligence". Sure, a minimum of it is necessary - those chess-playing autists gets nowhere.
This chess-playing autist earned $380,000 at Google last year, not including GSUs (stock). Paid off the mortgage on my $1.5M house in the good part of Mountain View. Can't believe it took me 6 years from date of purchase, but I didn't want to sell any stock to do it.
I thought that was common knowledge by now. A lot of times, this is done by/with rich kids.
To the people who think this is not serious... these tests are also used to determine who does or does not get scholarships.
A full ride scholarship means you do not pay for tuition, books, or even living expenses, if you live in a dorm. Lesser scholarships may only cover tuition + books, or tuition.
Still, given all the bitching about student loan debt: consider that these people, *minimally* get out with one year less of loan debt.
If they can additionally either keep their grades up themselves, or have someone do it for them, they can keep renewing the scholarship, and graduate with zero loan debt, compared to the rest of the schlubs who are coming out with a quarter million or more in student loan debt.
Further, fraudulently obtaining a scholarship this way means one less scholarship for a truly academically gifted person, who ends up paying the freight themselves, and if they do not come from a silver spoon background, it means they graduate with debt they would otherwise not have had. Even if they are a silver spoon case, they've lost the time value of money spent out of pocket, which translated to a smaller inheritance/trust fund/whatever.
This is, in fact a big deal. We are talking really large amounts of money here.
As a final consideration, this: the people taking these tests over and over for different people each time: they've had a *hell of a lot* of practice at this point. They are likely very, very good at it.
Who cares, I make six figures while the traditional "smart" kids are saddled with $35-50k in debt working for some a pittance. My favorite is a Cornell engineer who graduated top of his class and now makes $45k even after three years of work. Lets not forget the law school kids who took on an 100k extra in debt for the privilege of being glorified paper pushers.
Grades mean nothing when you have no life direction which is the problem most students have. Nothing of value was lost either, I can't stand working and employing the nitwits coming out of colleges these days.
Scoring well on the SAT gives you the opportunity to go to a good college. And getting a good GPA from a good college gives you the opportunity to get a good job. But there are people who are quite successful doing neither. So the question is if you disentangle the effects of the opportunities does getting a good SAT score actually mean anything.
Where do you go to get your phone unlocked, to buy goods unavailable anywhere else in the country, to do dubious, dodgy transactions?
"TL;DR I got lucky and someone took a chance on me despite my average grades, average test scores, and below average university program. Now that I'm experienced, I refuse to consider people like my younger self for employment. *pulls up ladder behind self* "
I love how when a person exploits a loophole, it's considered cheating. When a company/government does it, it's "savvy"
Unfortunately FTA is unsurprising. Cheating in uni is so rampant that it is, at times, funny. I saw a third year EE asked what Kirchoff's laws are, and he and drew a blank. He'd done no work in the last five or six months, and literally could not remember the two equations that we used almost every day in almost every class, at one scale or another, explicitly or not.
The worst is those who know a language that the teachers and TAs do not. The open talking in exams was really distracting. I could not believe that they were not being reprimanded or expelled. There was a low hubbub in most exams, with occasional rare exceptions: exams in a gym I remember being much quieter, cheating was still really easy to see and moderately distracting, and occasionally a prof would print individualized exams. Core courses never did.
I was not impressed.
So TFA does not surprise me either.
Posting AC since some of those are now managers!
See subject: NOW, I've got your "number down" - you're clueless!
* That explains everything about you now, lol... makes sense!
As to your "business acumen" - do you actually HAVE a degree in it? I do. As to you? Hell - I truly SERIOUSLY doubt it!
Especially after my having to SCHOOL YOUR DUMB ASS on it here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Regarding your idiotic "it's OK for MS to lose money" & clue:
NO, IT'S NOT DUMBASS!
New NEWS/NewsFlash - Upper Mgt. & Boards of Directors have a FUDICIARY DUTY TO STOCKHOLDERS TO KEEP IT COMING IN + TO PRODUCE GROWTH, stupid... NOT to "tolerate" loss makers (like you obviously are with that line of UTTERLY CLUELESS BULLSHIT out of you!)
APK
P.S.=> That's for your line of bullshit to me here the other day, prick -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comm... & THANK GOD I don't have to put up with bullshitters like YOU anymore, having decided to run my own SUCCESSFUL business instead years ago... apk
The students involved are "leveraging their core competencies" in an "innovative" manner, using "right-sourcing" and achieving "synergies" in a dynamic "marketplace" in order to remain "globally competitive".
This isn't a crime. Lying to a business isn't illegal.
"I am every bit a PHB but you are still insane." - by KGIII (973947) on Friday May 29, 2015 @05:07PM (#49801895)
See subject: Psychiatric sciences pro? If not, you've just libeled me (and, you're not by your own admission, per your ALLEGED credentials, you're not) - smarten up!
* For a guy who has those types of degrees, allegedly?
Man, you really should watch what you say, & THINK before speaking - it's not intelligent otherwise!
However: It shows YOU may be a "wee bit" insane actually, & being a 'pot calling a kettle black' hypocrite - you're not considering the consequences of your actions... for some, doing THAT is the very defintion of insanity.
"(Note that I do not debate the use of the hosts file. In fact I have contributed to the MVPs Hosts File in the past. That does not make you sane, nor should it. Embrace your insanity and keep on doing what you are doing you shining star, you!) Really, shine on you crazy diamond." - by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29, 2015 @05:07PM (#49801895)
Sorry man - Wrong: I'm not crazy here.
Apparently, you are, per "The insanity defense reflects the generally accepted notion that persons who cannot appreciate the consequences of their actions should not be punished for criminal acts" from -> http://legal-dictionary.thefre...
PLUS, again: Your business saavy NEEDS WORK http://slashdot.org/comments.p... since losing money != good business for the reasons I noted there AND BUYBACKS are fueling fake growth lately...
* Glad to hear you're intelligent enough to use a custom hosts file though. It's your 1 saving grace in my eyes... + I 'fixed' your words quoted placing your REAL NAME into them, since you posted ac THIS time, for posterities' sake!
APK
P.S.=> Still - Not only are you an ADMITTED "PHB", but you're also not very smart for doing that (for a guy who has some smarts per your alleged credentials) - I've seen that before from 'book smart' folks though who don't have a lick of sense in "the streets" or life... apk