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Education China United States

Chinese Nationals Accused of Taking SATs For Others 220

Posted by samzenpus 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."
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Chinese Nationals Accused of Taking SATs For Others More

Chinese Nationals Accused of Taking SATs For Others

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  • Hilarious! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 )
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Just because you suck at every test you take doesn't mean they're worthless. Quite the reverse, actually.....

      • SAT and IQ tests certain domains that are predictive of intelligence and achievement but don't gauge the most important intelligence for life: social intelligence

        much as you can have as autistic savant/ asperger's individual who can play 12 games of chess in his head but doesn't know the difference between the price of a candy bar and a car, the rest of us also have small mental domains where we are geniuses, but in other domains we are idiots. all of us. for those who attach much value to topological manipulation or word memorization, tested intelligences, real life will come as a shock when someone else who isn't "smart," according to traditional testing methods, achieves highly and surpasses the "smart" individuals, because they are able to perceive, communicate, and manipulate in the social sphere of life at a more advanced level

        social intelligence is the real iq, the real true intelligence, and the most crucial and vital mental skill you can have in your life. the rest are pathetic sideshows. there are math professors who can't balance their checkbooks. see the problem?

        btw, i scored near perfect on my SAT and very highly on my IQ tests. i attach no self-worth to either. they are cute little games, sandboxed kiddie stuff, not my sense of meaning in life. anyone who attaches meaning to their SAT scores or IQ tests is, in all serious, an idiot

        I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.

        - Response upon being questioned as to his IQ, in interview with Deborah Solomon "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004).

        http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/S... [wikiquote.org]

        • Re:Hilarious! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29, 2015 @09:13AM (#49798519)

          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.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          SAT and IQ tests certain domains that are predictive of intelligence and achievement but don't gauge the most important intelligence for life: social intelligence

          Well it may not show how well they party, but the SAT has a large essay portion that does gauge how well students are able to communicate their knowledge (they may not have had it when you were young). And isn't this important? The essay portion is getting even more substantial in about half a year. College admission boards also look at extra-

          • yes, while the guy who does good on his SAT is usually also socially intelligent as well, as you say, my point is that the guy who does poorly on his SAT but is socially intelligent, will be more successful in life, and is more intelligent according to the most important measure, than the guy who has stellar SAT scores but can't persuade or impress for shit

            there are people who think, for example, an amazing ability to manipulate complex topological shapes in your head means you're somehow a more intelligent

            • Actually success in life is about excelling at skills that are in high demand. If you can manipulate complex topological shapes in a way that many people find desirable, then you will probably be successful.

              If you are charismatic in a way that isn't in high demand, then you probably won't be as successful as the math guy.

              I have plenty of charismatic friends who are unemployed because they have no other skills. They are fun to hang out with though.

            • You give too much importance to charisma and persuasion, in other words manipulative skills.

              Sure, if you need to sell something, it may be useful, but from my experience, I noticed that people having high social skills don't really care about others.
              They care about themselves, because they are too focused on their own importance.
              And in companies, they tend to become managers, but it's the workers that really produce something.

          • Re:Hilarious! (Score:4, Informative)

            by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @10:38AM (#49799347)

            the SAT has a large essay portion that does gauge how well students are able to communicate their knowledge

            Many colleges ignore the essay portion of the SAT, because it has not been shown to indicate much of anything. Scores on the multiple choice portion of the test, on the other hand, are more highly correlated with academic success in college, and financial success after college, than any other measurement. So, of course, they are the biggest factor in the admissions process at most universities.

            • Re:Hilarious! (Score:4, Informative)

              by slew ( 2918 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @01:29PM (#49800763)

              Although it's true that many colleges ignore the SAT essay, but multiple choice portion of the test is *not* highly correlated with academic success. The highest correlation is (sadly) family income, followed by weighted/normalized high-school grades (e.g., not GPA, but a weighted GPA), and only then standardized tests. Also above a certain high score (~1400/1600 on the SAT), there is nearly no correlation at all with higher scores and educational and post-educational outcomes (and yes I used to work with admission committees for a university that cooperated with other highly-selective university to compile statistics on this subject over many years back in the '80s).

              The idea that the SAT matters is a myth propagated by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) corporation. In fact the creation of the competing ACT test was prompted by the fact that the SAT origins were an *aptitude* test (that can draw it's lineage from the US army IQ testing recruits in WWI) , not an *achievement* test (testing things that you should learn in school).

              Colleges wanted an achievement test, but were dismissed by the ETS, however because of the use of the SAT in ivy league schools, the University of California signed on in 1960 and made the ETS/SAT into a juggernaut. Now because of discontent by UC and other schools on its predictive value, the ETS has changes the SAT twice in 10 years, which in its latest form, now looks more like an *achievement* test (like the ACT was).

              Of course there is open debate in higher education on even requiring tests like the SAT or ACT. For example this study [nacacnet.org] tracking 123,000 students over 33 universities found only minimal correlation of academic success with even submitting SAT scores to the school to evaluate (let alone what the score actually was).

            • that may be the status quo, but the status quo is a failed concept

              http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]

              Q. Other insights from the data you’ve gathered about Google employees?

              A. One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.

              What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.

              Q. Can you elaborate a bit more on the lack of correlation?

              A. After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different. You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently.

              Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it’s much more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.

              this is about GPA, not SAT, but they take home is that scores on academic tests are shit, because the "academic environment is an artificial environment". it focuses on skills that don't really help in the job. colleges need to change what they value, because what they value does not adequately prepare people for life

              also:

              Q. Other insights from the studies you’ve already done?

              A. On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.

              Instead, what works well are structured behavioral interviews, where you have a consistent rubric for how you assess people, rather than having each interviewer just make stuff up.

              Behavioral interviewing also works — where you’re not giving someone a hypothetical, but you’re starting with a question like, “Give me an example of a time when you solved an analytically difficult problem.” The interesting thing about the behavioral interview is that when you ask somebody to speak to their own experience, and you drill into that, you get two kinds of information. One is you get to see how they actually interacted in a real-world situation, and the valuable “meta” information you get about the candidate is a sense of what they consider to be difficult.

              On the leadership side, we’ve found that leadership is a more ambiguous and amorphous set of characteristics than the work we did on the attributes of good management, which are more of a checklist and actionable.

              We found that, for leaders, it’s important that people know you are consistent and fair in how you think about making decisions and that there’s an element of predictability. If a leader is consistent, people on their teams experience tremendous freedom, because then they know that within certain parameters, they can do whatever they want. If your manager is all over the plac

          • Well it may not show how well they party, but the SAT has a large essay portion

            I don't remember an essay portion on the SAT. Is this a new thing (as in the last 25 years)?

        • Re:Hilarious! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by TsuruchiBrian ( 2731979 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @11:56AM (#49800035)

          social intelligence is the real iq, the real true intelligence, and the most crucial and vital mental skill you can have in your life. the rest are pathetic sideshows. there are math professors who can't balance their checkbooks. see the problem?

          First of all, balancing a check book is not social intelligence. Secondly a "math professor" is exactly the sort of person it would take to automate the balancing of checkbooks for society as a whole, removing one more tedious and ultimately unnecessary task from our responsibility.

          No the SAT is not a good measure of intelligence, but it is not because it fails to capture social intelligence.

          Einstein was bad at arithmetic. Most people misunderstand this to mean that he was bad at math. Nothing could be further from the truth. Math is for creative people, arithmetic is (now) for machines (thanks to those creative people).

          Yes social intelligence is important to personal success like a working liver is important to personal success. Since it is exceedingly common, it is rightly ignored as a necessary component to success (like the near infinite number of other potential deficits).

          Other forms of intelligence that are far less common in humans, are more widely recognized due to their rarity. It's supply and demand.

          Why do we value genius in mathematics and physics, etc higher than social intelligence?

          Why is the price of gold higher than price water per weight/volume/particle, even though water is essential to life and gold isn't? Why do gold panners keep the useless gold and throw away all the life sustaining water?

          It's the same reason.

          If half the people on the planet were math geniuses, then we wouldn't even need to teach it in school. Kids who flunked out of college would get dead end mathematician jobs for minimum wage.

          But that's not how it is. Kids who flunk out of college still have enough social intelligence to deal with customers and take directions from a boss, and sense when other people are pissed. This skill is valued (i.e. they find jobs that actually pay money), it's just not highly valued.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by smithmc ( 451373 ) *
          The SAT doesn't exist to gauge one's future success in life. It exists to determine eligibility for college admission. The kind of people who can do well on the SAT are the kind of people who can learn they stuff they'll be taught in college, presumably - which does not, for better or worse, generally include social skills.
    • so true you see this bs at jobs now.

    • Re:Hilarious! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by buddyglass ( 925859 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @07:51AM (#49797999)
      Disagree [slate.com].

      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).

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gatzke ( 2977 )

        You can game university classes too. Pay someone to write your papers or even sit in for you in tests.

        We try to have individual accountability, but people that don't want to work in class often expend limitless effort to get around our defenses.

        I would like to think that these efforts eventually catch up with the perpetrators in life.

        • "Cheating" isn't what I meant by "gaming". I meant devoting significant time to improving one's "test-taking skills" and/or specifically studying the SAT. I suspect the incidence of outright cheating on the SAT is actually pretty low. Not "zero", but fairly insignificant relative to the total number of test-takers.

          • The same is true of university exams. My undergraduate exams, for example, mostly required that you answer two of three questions per exam. To get a first (for people outside the UK: the highest classification), you needed to get 70%. Most questions were around 40% knowledge and 60% application of the knowledge. If you could predict the topics that the examiner would pick, then that meant that you could immediately discard a third of the material. To get the top grade, you needed to get 100% in one que

          • I meant devoting significant time to improving one's "test-taking skills" and/or specifically studying the SAT.

            I am not sure I would consider that "gaming". Before I took the SAT, I read a book on "How to Ace the SAT". The "tricks" worked, but they were not really "tricks", but broadly useful skills in critical reasoning. For instance, all through school, you are taught how to find the right answer. But for the SAT, it is useful to be able to see that an answer is obviously wrong, and that is a very useful skill in life. I also learned the skill of dimensional analysis, where instead of doing a lot of math to s

        • I would like to think that these efforts eventually catch up with the perpetrators in life.

          I suspect these catch up to the perpetrators in the college years. I can see such cheating working in large undergraduate classes, but have a hard time seeing it working later on once they get to upper division courses. By then, class sizes are smaller, teachers get to know their graduating class members and have the same students in several classes across multiple semesters. Unless there is some complacency going on such as the school wanting the football player to pass and putting pressure on the teachers

      • Well my IQ has been tested at 141 and yet I failed almost every standardized test I've been put through here in Ontario, that being grade 3, grade 6, grade 9 and grade 10.

        • And apparently you don't understand what "correlate" means, either.

          • Correlate: have a mutual relationship or connection, in which one thing affects or depends on another.

            It was used correctly :-)

            • perhaps correctly, but also vacuously. your "counter-example" only applies if the connection is perfect, which is not implied by a correlation.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by smithmc ( 451373 ) *
              In statistics, that is *not* what correlation means. Two phenomena can have a high degree of correlation without either one having a causative effect on the other.

        • Well my IQ has been tested at 141 and yet I failed almost every standardized test I've been put through here in Ontario, that being grade 3, grade 6, grade 9 and grade 10.

          IQ tests measure intelligence. School exams measure knowledge. They are not the same thing. Next time, trying reading the textbook and doing the assignments. Since you were unable to figure this out on your own, the IQ score may have been a fluke, or maybe your name was mistakenly put on the wrong answer sheet.

          • No, the SAT test is used to determine over all performance and one of those metrics is raw intelligence. After I failed the grade 6 standard test, I was given the chance for a redo, but in a different style that was hands on and verbal, I aced it in the top 1% of all results. If I failed the standard test but aced the special test, that goes to show one case where the standard test failed. Now I'm one result out of million, but how many other student are being screwed because the test just doesn't work?

      • Disagree [slate.com].

        The Slate article makes some good points. On the other hand, I almost stopped reading at this nonsense:

        In a four-year study that started with nearly 3,000 college students, a team of Michigan State University researchers led by Neal Schmitt found that test score (SAT or ACTâ"whichever the student took) correlated strongly with cumulative GPA at the end of the fourth year. If the students were ranked on both their test scores and cumulative GPAs, those who had test scores in the top half (above the 50th percentile, or median) would have had a roughly two-thirds chance of having a cumulative GPA in the top half. By contrast, students with bottom-half SAT scores would be only one-third likely to make it to the top half in GPA.

        This tells me almost nothing about a test's effectiveness, other than it can differentiate pretty well between "high-achievers" and "total morons." I could probably come up with a "test" that could satisfy this stat by talking to each student for a minute.

        But hey, I gave the Slate article author the benefit of the doubt, so I tracked down the actual article [msu.edu] he cited in this paragraph, which provides da

      • In my experience, it measures the strictness of one's parents. My sister wanted to do better on the SAT and enrolled herself in a class. It was full of Asian kids who were forced to go to SAT classes on a Saturday by their parents.

        I am a person who owes a great deal of my success to the pressure to succeed from my mother. I certainly don't under estimate the value of having a parent like this, but I don't think most people consider this a skill, but rather a circumstance.

        I don't think measuring a child's

    • Re:Hilarious! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @08:10AM (#49798101)

      I don't think the SAT is really that useful of a test. However colleges seem to use them for entrance criteria, as a number is easier to evaluate than judging a person on the whole.
      But if they are willing to cheat on the SAT test to get in, I don't think colleges really want people of such questionable moral caliber to enter the school.

      My experience with Chinese students, this isn't too surprising, they are far more willing to cheat, than take the consequences of getting a low grade. That is why when they show statistics showing where China is succeeding, I really question it, because their culture seems to want to win, with the actual objectives of the grading as not important. A Sr.Year computer science major the student was the curve breaker on the tests. Went to me asking how in C++ can he use decimal numbers (the answer was using the float data type, which we learned about on day 3 in the freshman class, and had used such a data type all threw the program. Made me realize, this student was either cheating technically (threw nefarious methods), or cheating himself (Only test prep, once the test is done, it brand dumps out of the system). Because in anything practical he was useless.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KGIII ( 973947 )

        To pick the more obvious...

        Threw and brand... Through and brain...

        Are you sure you went to college and didn't cheat? Oh, perhaps you are Chinese?

        Also, your experience may be true but it may be biased and bigoted and only you know the truth. My experience in college was was the opposite. Chinese, Asians in general, appeared to work hard to get very good grades. I, of course, attended a very good institution and did so many years ago so things may have changed or may have been different at your institution. L

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by m00sh ( 2538182 )

        I don't think the SAT is really that useful of a test. However colleges seem to use them for entrance criteria, as a number is easier to evaluate than judging a person on the whole. But if they are willing to cheat on the SAT test to get in, I don't think colleges really want people of such questionable moral caliber to enter the school.

        My experience with Chinese students, this isn't too surprising, they are far more willing to cheat, than take the consequences of getting a low grade. That is why when they show statistics showing where China is succeeding, I really question it, because their culture seems to want to win, with the actual objectives of the grading as not important. A Sr.Year computer science major the student was the curve breaker on the tests. Went to me asking how in C++ can he use decimal numbers (the answer was using the float data type, which we learned about on day 3 in the freshman class, and had used such a data type all threw the program. Made me realize, this student was either cheating technically (threw nefarious methods), or cheating himself (Only test prep, once the test is done, it brand dumps out of the system). Because in anything practical he was useless.

        You cannot use floats for decimal numbers since floats are approximate types.

        In banking, you would never use float to represent money, which are decimals.

        • Decimal numbers (base 10 numbers) are different than numbers with a "decimal point" (real numbers).

          You would not want to use floating point numbers to represent quantities which require absolute precision. (although floating point numbers usually can represent whole numbers as well as binary fractions with absolute precision.

          In fact there are probably lots of good representations of money that use floating point numbers. What they lose in precision, they gain in flexibility.

          You probably wouldn't use a floa

      • I don't think colleges really want people of such questionable moral caliber to enter the school.

        Why not? Many of these people will go on to be very successful CEOs, lawyers, politicians, and investment bankers.

      • Of all the things you should learn as a computer science student, remembering the way to define a floating point number in a particular language isn't really that important.

        I suppose you are either an idiot or a cheater if you allegedly spent a lot of time programming in c++ and don't know what a float is, but hopefully your time was spent learning the concepts (hard) rather than specific language syntax (trivial).

        Also no one uses floats anymore. You are supposed to use doubles. Even most 32-bit architect

    • If you dont get at least 650 on the Quatitative, then you wont do well in STEM. That test is pretty basic.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dj245 ( 732906 )

      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.

      If non-Chinese nationals are doing this, don't you think Chinese nationals are doing this too? Everything is for sale in China. Would it bother you if you or your children didn't make it to your preferred university because a cheater beat you out?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by KGIII ( 973947 )

      I hired a programmer (this was years ago) who must have had someone take the entrance exams for him. He could not speak well, he could not write worth a damn, and knew almost nothing that we would consider the typical metrics. But the kid could code. He could code like a son-of-a-bitch. Fast, even if he henpecked the keyboard, and I never found a single flaw in his maths or programming. I paid him very well and he spent his money on Star Wars toys (and the likes) to populate his office. It was awesome and o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      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.

      The SATs aren't for measuring intelligence. They're for measuring approximate education on a standard scale. That's their entire purpose - because if you're trying to compare two people who are from two different schools, how can you tell if candida

      • I live in Ontario and I can tell you that our tests are a joke, they really only test if you can work your head around the broken logic presented in badly worded questions in an attempt to see if you can provide an unrealistic answer. I was allowed to redo the grade 6 provincial standard test because I failed it, on the redo I was allowed a specialized test which was given orally and using hands on work. I aced it, top 1% of all marks, so don't tell me the tests work, they don't, they never have. I know

  • Reminds me of my youth (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • Mildly ironic... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29, 2015 @07:31AM (#49797865)

    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.

    • 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.)

  • What is all the fuss about? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I know many Latinos in my area that share drivers licenses. One girl that even went to court as another girl for a traffic ticket she got.

  • Wait for further developements (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trachman ( 3499895 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @08:02AM (#49798053) Journal

    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.

    • Re:Wait for further developements (Score:5, Interesting)

      by khchung ( 462899 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @09:10AM (#49798495) Journal

      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.

      Are you sure they also cannot READ English? Because READING is all you need to get perfect scores in GRE.

      I have met plenty of Chinese who can't speak or write English worth squat, and can't understand English spoken by the average American such as in the movies (cuz their teacher back in China mispronounced most of the words), BUT they can READ just fine.

      Reading is the only thing you can learn with only a dictionary and extreme discipline to study.

    • It used to annoy me that the Chinese applicants to my program had a separate admissions group comprising exclusively Chinese professors.

      It still annoys me, but I realized that it's necessary since every single one has perfect test scores (including the TOEFL as you point out, which is just hirarious), glowing carbon-copy letters of recommendation, and a near-identical statement of interest. There's very little information to make a decision on a formal level, so you need to make best guesses based on provin

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by digsbo ( 1292334 )
      I had the sense that the Chinese students at my college formed a group in which a few males learned English and effectively segregated their female members away from interacting with the American students (no idea if this is common). so, for them, not really a matter of cannot learn the language, but more like "don't want to integrate, especially to allow the females to integrate". It worked OK until a professor required an oral presentation, which I'm certain was at least somewhat intentionally done to den

      • A Chinese friend and I were discussing Chinese women.

        He told me I shouldn't bother. Any Chinese woman I could get anywhere with had already learned English and was ruined. Might as well just date Americans.

        His wife has been living in America for over 20 years and speaks no English, his kids speak unaccented Cantonese.

  • Ah, this is why we need H-1b VISAs. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29, 2015 @08:08AM (#49798081)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • ...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.

      So really, we should be importing our executives, not our engineers.

  • nothing new here (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29, 2015 @08:17AM (#49798151)

    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.

  • It's a terrible method, but the best we know... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sirwired ( 27582 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @08:28AM (#49798217)

    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 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.

      The GRE is the graduate one. It's about the worse method in existence for selecting PhD students, and certainly not the best available. I'm not claiming it's perfect, but the system we use in the UK which is somewhat more ad-hoc is very substantially better.

      Then again,

  • Ok So What About (Score:4, Insightful)

    by g0bshiTe ( 596213 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @08:37AM (#49798263)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I mean imagine if you'd do this and that person went on to become a CEO?

      The person you are standing in for is probably the son of some PLA general. And you still have relatives in China. So you will be returning and the general's idiot kid will be attending Harvard. And going on to be a CEO.

      So, yes. This is typical executive behavior.

  • So will that be the next can do ad for ITT? We only hire the hidden talented and capable...

    HAHAHAHA!

  • Remember this story (Score:3)

    by tomhath ( 637240 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @08:55AM (#49798377)
    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.
  • 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 guy that took the bar exam for Ted Kennedy confessed some years later.

      He was disbarred. Ted kept his place in the Senate.

  • Great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Translation Error ( 1176675 ) on Friday May 29, 2015 @10:32AM (#49799285)
    Now we have Chinese grade farmers.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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