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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.
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.
I think it is similar in reverse when Asians look at Caucasians?
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.
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.
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!
They do; but, calling the LSAT serious is somewhat comical. It is wildly mocked in legal circles as being almost pointless. To use a car analogy, in terms of usefulness in carrying an obese family of four, the SAT is to a mid-size sedan what the LSAT is to a Vespa scooter. I've taken this collosal waste of time and money. I got a sufficient score to get into law school with no preparation.
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.
Uh, you are "some millennial with a [communications] degree".
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
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.
The worst problem is when schools started demanding photo ID for SATS to "stop" this confusion, only to not realize that quite a few asian people have identical names too, particularly after they have been anglicized. How many Tommy Chen's have I known in my life? Well over a hundred. The only difference was SSN, which of course, isn't on most ID.
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.
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.
I think it is similar in reverse when Asians look at Caucasians?
It is not who you are, but who you spend time with, that determines this. If you are Caucasian, but grow up attending a school with lots of Asians, then you will have no problem telling them apart. I lived in Shanghai for several years, and when I first arrived, I had a hard time remembering faces. By the time I left, the neural nets in my brain's face recognition module had been reconfigured. Today, I live in San Jose (more Asians than whites) and I have no problem remembering faces.
I may sound a bit racist or ignorant here but, trust me, I am not... Really... I am not.
Let me start by saying that I am 1/4 black. I have spent time living in urban areas. I spent eight years in the military where there were many people of races other than white. My family is urban and many are totally black on that side of the family. I have spent more time with them, living with some for some time even, and have observed that many (certainly not all) initially look the same until you have become familiar with them. I have not found this to be true with white people and this is, I believe, because they typically have a number of different characteristics while still being considered white. Hair, facial structure, some skin tone, and other easily observable traits. Using the black people as my example the vast majority have brown/dark hair, are dark skinned (some variation), wide noses, etc.. These are racial traits which are more prevalent in those who have more melanin and likely for the same reason they have more melanin.
They are not all the same nor are they different people. They/we think just like the rest of the world - with a balance of pros and cons in their situations, just like the rest of the planet. People like to make assumptions but they, the poor inner-city people of any color, may be situationally challenged they are not (by any means) mentally challenged. Their vocabulary may be different than your/our own but this is no different then "y'all" or "you'uns." It is no different than an accent from a New Yorker or an accent from a Texan. It is no different than Anglicized words nor is it different than local colloquialisms. See the island and swamp people in the Mississippi Delta for another good example.
Some may view a portion of my post and assume the rest (we shall see) but I implore you to read the post critically, entirely, and make no assumptions. It is not, nor am I, racist towards black folk. A knee-jerk reaction is not called for. I do couch the racist bit because I honestly have a knee-jerk reaction with Germans and Japanese (I have watched too many WWII documentaries) but my logic circuit kicks in, during these situations, and I immediately recall that these persons are persons and not at all accountable for the atrocities and that my own country is just as guilty. While my initial thinking is certainly racist (in the above situation) I immediately correct it and then go out of my way to ensure I am not judgmental in deed and, ideally, in thought. What may be fun is seeing how many folks only read a portion of what I wrote and make assumptions based on that. I am assuming that they do not read this if such happens.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I mentioned this to the wife a few weeks back. That off the top of my head, all non-caucasian races seem to have black hair. Full stop.
My mom is Chinese (born and raised in Hong Kong). She has a much easier time differentiating Caucasian faces than Asian faces.
I have literally heard her say "All Chinese people look the same", when she failed recognize someone. I don't think she knows this is considered a racist thing to say. To her it is just reality.
I am not saying the example of my mom proves anything about whether Chinese faces are actually objectively more similar than Caucasian faces.
What I am saying is that the relative inability to recognize faces of a certain race or ethnicity, and acknowledgement of this, shouldn't be conflated with racism.
I might suggest saying something more like "Chinese people all look the same to me", thereby acknowledging the deficit of the subject, rather than making the statement a descriptive claim about the object (chinese people).