Nah, not enough, at least at my undergrad. Its just like in court, witness testimony can't make a case. Students always say they are thinking and just staring into space. Unless the exam answered are remarkably like the neighbors, there's no way to prove any cheating but were involved.
What's bizarre to me is the many LACs that give students take home finals and just tell them not to use notes or Google or collaboration. "Honor code is taken seriously people really don't cheat!" Yeah uh huh sure. Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if test centers administered the MCAT that way? Here you go, bring it back in the morning, no cheating! What the hell makes it OK to handle the GPA so loosely in those schools? Sets everything up to reward cheaters.all schools should just make every student take every test at a prometrics center
what's LAC
Liberal arts college
Its more the assessing ability/reasoning capacity that is the issue, not knowledge. It may be important to demonstrate that, given a set of general principles, I can figure out what happens when molecule A is put in acid for reasons other than knowing the product.
Uh huh and so if there were a prometric center by an LAC you'd be fine with them letting the testers take the test home? Telling them to only spend X time per section and not use the internet or collaborate?
And what would differentiate the MCAT? Shouldn't the culture or environment which prevents cheating on a takehome ochem final still apply?
You must recognize that for every one you catch several probably get by. Wouldnt seeing that a chunk of students are cheaters motivate you to switch to a more cheatproofed system?
I don't follow. You think whether a test is multiple choice or timed or the same questions as everyone else's test, would change whether a student was willing to violate the honor code?
How so? I mean a girl got caught sneaking flash cards into Ochem here last year, and I really did want to see her expelled.
Are you thinking that take home exams are simple multiple choice tests? In my experience 99% are not. Every take home exam I have gotten for a science class has been very open ended and outside research was not only encouraged, but needed. Collaboration was needed as well for take home group exams (yes, this is a thing).
Yeah these are extremely foreign ideas for me lolMCAT is a standardized exam and the conditions are very stringent - it makes sense to have it this way because you are directly comparing applicants on a national scale.
Take home exams are often very different than simple multiple choice tests - they are often open ended. Furthermore they work differently for different classes - they don't work too well for cut throat pre-med classes (but this is a generalization and I have had science classes where I had take home exams). The culture of cheating really depends on the environment - some environments are more laid back, grading is less harsh, professors are looking for more critical analysis rather than "right or wrong", and in these cases take home exams work fine. Some environments are really high-pressure (ex. top pre-med feeder schools), and maybe it won't work so well here. There are students at every school/class that cheat, but certain elements can make the cheating more widespread or more contained. Furthermore, cheating can be discouraged by raising the stakes.
I don't know where you are getting confused - are you projecting?
Well hey, maybe they cheated their way there and were just keeping up old habits
I go to a LAC and we have online closed book quizzes and take home tests pretty often. Drives me nuts. Students and teachers who think that no one cheats on these are delusional.
Just another reason something like the MCAT is necessary :/
well it's not really fair to those of us who don't cheat either. It's not on the prereq exams or anything, but I've had it on random quizzes and upper div chem/physics tests.
The prereqs and the upper divs end up in the same sGPA number, so it isn't that much a defense to say exams were proctored in prereqs anyways
ya, I was just responding to gandy's mention of "pre-med science courses", which I interpreted as prereqs
haha yeah, my SO is a phys/engineering major. I have a higher GPA but I feel significantly dumber
I know of some classes that have take-home exams (Ochem III comes to mind) but there are no rules given about internet use / collaboration / time limits. You're expected to use all resources you can come up with. I have absolutely never heard of any class here giving a take home test with easily-cheated instructions like no web, no working together, no notes, time limit, etc.
I'd always heard engi was the toughest, but that's not really the case here. Huge swaths of BME and ChemE get weeded out by the shared bio and chem prereqs alongside the premeds. And their school until this year had no + or - grading, so I had heard of some engineers graduating with 4.0s
wat
Yeah actually my water polo captain freshman and sophomore year graduated the engineering with a 4.0, never got a B. Thought he was going to end up at Microsoft but MIT snatched him with a really sexy salary at the last minute. Dude was awesome in every way, brainy and a six pack
