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Chinese Nationals Accused of Taking SATs For Others

Posted by samzenpus on from the grades-for-pay dept.

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."

2 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hilarious! by buddyglass · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Disagree.

    SAT scores correlate closely with measured IQ, and, when taken together with high school grades, are a decent predictor of success at university. I do think that article discounts the extent to which the SAT can be "gamed", though. Of course, if you get a high score because you spent hours studying the SAT in order to get a high score then that also measures something. Maybe not intelligence, but "ambition" and "self-discipline". Which, of course, also contribute to success at university (and in the job market).

  2. Re:Hilarious! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't be too impressed about "social intelligence". Sure, a minimum of it is necessary - those chess-playing autists gets nowhere.

    Intelligence though, can gets you jobs in engineering or academia that simply isn't available to others - no matter how much social intelligence they have. Social intelligence can make you a leader, but won't help you make the right decisions. Hence, stupid presidents do stupid things. Hitler had social intelligence enough to gain a lot of power - then he fought a war with too many enemies and lost.

    The more successful leader types know their own limitations and use expert advisors - and listens to them. Experts that are overriden on a whim are not useful, and neither is the leader employing them.