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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.
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.
They already have you put your prints on the LSAT, actually.
The SATs and GREs are not state tests. They are run by private companies.
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.
Took one of the high end security certifications a few weeks ago and they required that my photo be taken. That was printed on the pass certification and according to the test watcher sent up to the corporate office.
Since it took multiple times until the software accepted the photo I am guessing they also do identification check.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.