Is It Cheating?

[cidem2065]

I think the idea is that the 50% is a baseline so you can help make sure you understand it, and what's really being graded is performance on the evens. Due to the curve and everyone getting odds right, it would be the same if only evens were graded. It's totally unfair to base grades on homework in the first place, since someone who is best buds with the physics savant and gets to compare his homework every night can have advantage etc.

You certainly know the professor better than me but I would be willing to bet they didn't think too deeply into how the homework panned out and just thought "here's some course points that aren't exam-based. Enjoy."

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[efle]

You certainly know the professor better than me but I would be willing to bet they didn't think too deeply into how the homework panned out and just thought "here's some course points that aren't exam-based. Enjoy."

Yep, he was new and the whole class had a moment of "what, seriously? homework points in a prereq? am I in high school again?" But most people were glad to have it

 

[mehc012]

Yep, he was new and the whole class had a moment of "what, seriously? homework points in a prereq? am I in high school again?" But most people were glad to have it

Lol, if it weren't for homework and project points I'd probably have had 0.5 higher GPA. I was the irresponsible procrastinator who learned the material in a last-minute cram sesh, but didn't study during the semester and barely got the hw in; sometimes I didn't fully finish a paper/report/problem set before turning it in. Good exam scores, though.
Since I've gotten to my postbacc, most of my classes have been almost entirely exam-based and often even have multiple choice. I sometimes worry that my GPA is only up because of these differences, and not the work I've put into my time management skills...or that the adcoms will think so. Guess I'll find out.

 

[efle]

Lol, if it weren't for homework and project points I'd probably have had 0.5 higher GPA. I was the irresponsible procrastinator who learned the material in a last-minute cram sesh, but didn't study during the semester and barely got the hw in; sometimes I didn't fully finish a paper/report/problem set before turning it in. Good exam scores, though.
Since I've gotten to my postbacc, most of my classes have been almost entirely exam-based and often even have multiple choice. I sometimes worry that my GPA is only up because of these differences, and not the work I've put into my time management skills...or that the adcoms will think so. Guess I'll find out.

I feel your pain, freshman year I pulled an all-nighter to write a 12 page term paper the day before it was due, and swore I'd never do it again, too much risk. Ended up doing the exact same thing this last semester. Thank god for a universally heavy emphasis on exam scores

 

[mehc012]

I feel your pain, freshman year I pulled an all-nighter to write a 12 page term paper the day before it was due, and swore I'd never do it again, too much risk. Ended up doing the exact same thing this last semester. Thank god for a universally heavy emphasis on exam scores

No, see, I pulled an all-nighter for every single homework, paper, or project that I had due. Always. Every semester. I never went to bed with an assignment finished, I just finished by class time in the morning. I also pulled an all-nighter before every single exam. I was great at working under pressure, and at predicting the exact amount of time needed to finish any given project. The problem with that strategy is that life likes to throw curveballs, like family drama, or illness, or a last-second computer issue, or worse...if you have exactly as much time as is needed, you can't manage the speedbumps.

My new philosophy, adopted during my postbacc, is that it only counts as time management if you could manage to pull it off after an unexpected delay hits. For example, in the past 2yrs I have had to pull only 1 all-nighter, and it was because I was working a fulltime job, a part-time job, and taking 2 evening classes, and then happened to get hit with a stomach bug which ate up 2 full days of my time right before exams. I pulled it off because I was used to performing like that...but this time that was the result AFTER a curveball, not as default.
Sometimes I wish I'd figured all of this out earlier, but then I feel that if I hadn't had 8yrs of constant poor time management training me to kick academic butt after putting myself through the wringer, I'd never have managed that week. I spent 2d sick as a dog (lost ~10lbs in those 2d), then got up, took a quiz, went home, pulled an all-nighter to study, drove to my exam, knocked it out, drove to my work, and powered through a 12hr hospital shift. Sadly, once I was no longer febrile and vomiting, it just felt...normal, because I was so used to studying, working, and test-taking like that.

 

[efle]

dayum I think I'd need a serious amphetamine habit to live your life

 

[AlbinoHawk DO]

I wouldn't consider it cheating. The professor allowed students to take the exam. This means that old exam is the property of that other student. That other student may give you his or her property if they choose to. Sure, you can argue about exam style/question wording/etc. but how do you quantify that? What if you use a book at your local library that another student doesn't have access to? In some sense you're using a resource not everyone has. If it really worries you this much, ask the professor instead of an internet forum.

 

[mehc012]

dayum I think I'd need a serious amphetamine habit to live your life

Haha, it's not so bad. I used to think caffeine was bad for you, so I learned to pull up to 3 all-nighters in a week with none.
Now that I have read the research and think that it's at least neutral, if not good for you, I will have 200mg or so when I'm staying up or at the start of a 12, and suddenly it's a lot easier! No amphetamines required!

 

[swindoll]

OP, why don't you email your professor and ask?

 

[Espadaleader]

Exams are always circulating. In my medical school professors give us practice exams.... Undergrad is a load of crap

 

[BurbyPrep89]

I think it's ridiculous that anyone would consider this cheating or unethical. Do you understand ethics? Dear God.

Is it also cheating to get an amazing shadowing opportunity with the Surgeon General because he's your dad's golfing buddy?

Is it cheating to have volunteered at a foreign hospital because your parents could afford the travel fare?

Is it cheating to get a letter of recommendation from an AdCom because you were able to shadow her/him because he/she is your godparent?

Is it cheating to get an amazing research position because your fraternity brother also works there and recommends you?

Is it cheating to go to a private school that lends you better opportunities for an Ivy undergrad that provides you more avenues to network than your state school counterpart? Just because either your parents had money or you got scholarships?

Life isn't fair, get over it. Life is also about networking and using what you have to your advantage. If someone makes the choice to join an organisation that uses the availability of old tests as a selling point during recruitment, then who are you to condemn them? Pledge yourself or shut up. There are a million ways to have an "unfair advantage" over someone else. What makes it fair or unfair?

 

[Psai]

I think that the highest goal of education should be learning. Questions should be written in a way that forces you to think. Old questions are the best method for study because you remember things that you got wrong. That's why everyone uses uworld

 

[efle]

I think it's ridiculous that anyone would consider this cheating or unethical. Do you understand ethics? Dear God.

Is it also cheating to get an amazing shadowing opportunity with the Surgeon General because he's your dad's golfing buddy?

Is it cheating to have volunteered at a foreign hospital because your parents could afford the travel fare?

Is it cheating to get a letter of recommendation from an AdCom because you were able to shadow her/him because he/she is your godparent?

Is it cheating to get an amazing research position because your fraternity brother also works there and recommends you?

Is it cheating to go to a private school that lends you better opportunities for an Ivy undergrad that provides you more avenues to network than your state school counterpart? Just because either your parents had money or you got scholarships?

Life isn't fair, get over it. Life is also about networking and using what you have to your advantage. If someone makes the choice to join an organisation that uses the availability of old tests as a selling point during recruitment, then who are you to condemn them? Pledge yourself or shut up. There are a million ways to have an "unfair advantage" over someone else. What makes it fair or unfair?

In none of these cases are you supposed to be having your capabilities as a student directly compared on a level playing field to others for a limited number of high marks. Sure you can build a better resume/ECs with connections and money, which adcoms understand. This does not excuse you making an A in Ochem only because you are much better informed on how to study than everybody else. By your logic it's fine to glance at the exam answers a TA accidentally left on their desk because life is unfair and this is just a fortunate event for you.

 

[efle]

Undergrad is a load of crap

So very true, the entire GPA system makes no freaking sense with how easily it can be gamed by selecting certain classes/professors and how different majors/universities can be.

 

[BurbyPrep89]

In none of these cases are you supposed to be having your capabilities as a student directly compared on a level playing field to others for a limited number of high marks. Sure you can build a better resume/ECs with connections and money, which adcoms understand. This does not excuse you making an A in Ochem only because you are much better informed on how to study than everybody else. By your logic it's fine to glance at the exam answers a TA accidentally left on their desk because life is unfair and this is just a fortunate event for you.

How is glancing at the actual answers to a test and studying for that test with past exam questions the same thing? You have the advantage of knowing how the professor asks questions vs you have the actual answers to the exam. So if you had an older sibling, who took the same classes, it would be wrong to get tips on professors' testing techniques? Forget greek life, what about family? There is a very clear difference between cheating and this situation. The line is not blurred. There is nothing wrong with having some advantage in this pre-med process, and there is nothing wrong with using that. Be it through networking, family, wealth or even lack thereof.

Yes, life is not fair. You play the cards you are dealt. Complaining about it just sounds like whining. Stop focusing on how the frat guy has test questions and concentrate on doing well yourself.

TL;DR: In every scenario people used an advantage to make them an overall more attractive applicant. Having a high GPA makes you a more attractive applicant.

 

[edgerock24]

I wouldn't consider it cheating. The professor allowed students to take the exam. This means that old exam is the property of that other student. That other student may give you his or her property if they choose to. Sure, you can argue about exam style/question wording/etc. but how do you quantify that? What if you use a book at your local library that another student doesn't have access to? In some sense you're using a resource not everyone has. If it really worries you this much, ask the professor instead of an internet forum.

This.

@efle, you are living in fantasyland if you truly believe that, if one student obtains an old exam, he/she has a civic duty to send it out to the rest of the class.

 

[efle]

How is glancing at the actual answers to a test and studying for that test with past exam questions the same thing? You have the advantage of knowing how the professor asks questions vs you have the actual answers to the exam. So if you had an older sibling, who took the same classes, it would be wrong to get tips on professors' testing techniques? Forget greek life, what about family? There is a very clear difference between cheating and this situation. The line is not blurred. There is nothing wrong with having some advantage in this pre-med process, and there is nothing wrong with using that. Be it through networking, family, wealth or even lack thereof.

Yes, life is not fair. You play the cards you are dealt. Complaining about it just sounds like whining. Stop focusing on how the frat guy has test questions and concentrate on doing well yourself.

TL;DR: In every scenario people used an advantage to make them an overall more attractive applicant. Having a high GPA makes you a more attractive applicant.

They're the same thing at different magnitudes, both an unequal advantage for performance on the exams, especially since often those old exams will have problems that show up on the new one. My point has always been that everyone should get the old exams to study with, that's all. It isn't unfair to study with old exams from sibs or frats or anybody, it's just wrong to be the only one with the leg up.

How's this for a blurry line, from personal experience: Prof provides the last 4 years of exams as practice. Frat buddy of mine has exams for the last 10 years, uses some of those older 6 available only to him. On the actual exam, there are a few problems which are identical to problems he saw in the older 6. He knew the answers ahead of time, while everyone who studied using the material available to them had to try to reason it out. He ended up being just barely over the A cutoff on the curve. Same story on all 4 exams. Nothing unethical here?

Or how about if this was with the MCAT, and someone whose father works for them leaks his son a practice exam for MCAT 2015 which is available to nobody else, providing him way more high quality prep, and even a few problems which re-appear with extremely minor tweaks on his administration of the test. Is this wrong?

This.

@efle, you are living in fantasyland if you truly believe that, if one student obtains an old exam, he/she has a civic duty to send it out to the rest of the class.

I think the duty is to make sure the prof knows it's out there available to some students and not others, which I've done before. Don't expect everyone to feel obligated to though. Certainly know I'd feel wrong barely making an A in a curved class due to seeing many problems before on an old test that not everyone had access to

 

[Ace Khalifa]

Welp, I guess by efle's flawed logic me and all of my friends (who were all good, kind, down-to-earth people) are cheaters because we all used old exams and passed them along when it was time to help the young'ins.

Hell no it's not cheating. It's making use of the resources available at your disposal. The point of premed prerequisite is to weed out the weakest students and the ones who are only halfhearted about pursuing medicine. Part of that is knowing how to study. Part of that is knowing what to study. Part of that is knowing how to get the most help from any resources except the actual exam you'll eventually take. And if the exam happens to have questions identical to exams from 6-10 years ago, then you lucked out and there's nothing wrong with that. Life isn't just about skill. It's also about connections, resourcefulness, and a lot of luck.

 

[efle]

Welp, I guess by efle's flawed logic me and all of my friends (who were all good, kind, down-to-earth people) are cheaters because we all used old exams and passed them along when it was time to help the young'ins.

Hell no it's not cheating. It's making use of the resources available at your disposal. The point of premed prerequisite is to weed out the weakest students and the ones who are only halfhearted about pursuing medicine. Part of that is knowing how to study. Part of that is knowing what to study. Part of that is knowing how to get the most help from any resources except the actual exam you'll eventually take. And if the exam happens to have questions identical to exams from 6-10 years ago, then you lucked out and there's nothing wrong with that. Life isn't just about skill. It's also about connections, resourcefulness, and a lot of luck.

You said you pass it on to other people, so by my logic, you're fine. It's limiting the resources to yourself and a few others in your group that bothers me.

What do you think about my MCAT example? If through a connection you could get a practice MCAT 2015 that no one else could, and effectively double your high quality official prep material, would it be fine to do so? Connections and all

 

[Ace Khalifa]

You said you pass it on to other people, so by my logic, you're fine. It's limiting the resources to yourself and a few others in your group that bothers me.

What do you think about my MCAT example? If through a connection you could get a practice MCAT 2015 that no one else could, and effectively double your high quality official prep material, would it be fine to do so? Connections and all

Yes and then I would distribute it to everyone I knew who had to take the new exam. This is no different from receiving and distributing old exams for college.

 

[efle]

Yes and then I would distribute it to everyone I knew who had to take the new exam. This is no different from receiving and distributing old exams for college.

And this seems wrong to me, it doesn't really nullify your unfair advantage to make sure your friends get unfair advantages of their own come their turn. You would still have a leg up on all the people taking the exam along side you, you'd just pass that on to the next generation as well. If I straight up cheat on a test for an A and then also help my younger brother cheat on the same test a year later...haven't really come out ethically neutral

 

[aprimenumber]

And this seems wrong to me, it doesn't really nullify your unfair advantage to make sure your friends get unfair advantages of their own come their turn. You would still have a leg up on all the people taking the exam along side you, you'd just pass that on to the next generation as well. If I straight up cheat on a test for an A and then also help my younger brother cheat on the same test a year later...haven't really come out ethically neutral

It's a murky area, in my opinion. It's one of those things where technically speaking, one is doing nothing wrong by keeping old tests and assignments and providing them to others unless the professor explicitly forbids them from doing that. I know that I would have done it had I not had a habit of throwing away all of my old assignments every time I had to move (less things to pack/worry about). Technically it's the responsibility of the professor to ensure that his/her tests provide new material.

I knew a classmate who quickly figured out that our biochem professor was taking his/her questions from a published guide, and the classmate torrented the solutions manual to it, and as a result, was able to ace every single test. Because the professor never forbade him from doing it, there is nothing technically wrong about what he did. Having said that, I did feel like his actions violated the spirit of the course, though not the actual letter.

In m opinion, whenever one begins to resort to those ethical technicalities, then one is already in a questionable area. Just because someone has a right doesn't mean it's right.

 

[Donthangme]

Completely disagree with this. Here's a good example. In my summer physics class, a few students found the instructor version of the answer manual, showing both even and odd HW solutions, on some torrent site. Nowhere legit/legal offers this. Our homeworks included both odd and even problems, and were scored for correctness as part of a curved final grade.

Do you really think it was fair for those students to be able to check their homework to ensure a 100% score, while everyone else could only comfirm the right answer on odds and often made mistakes on the evens? In my view, what they did was wrong and gave only them an advantage, and telling everyone else they should have been more resourceful is a load of crap.

Copying the solutions manual directly is cheating, however homework is a relatively small percentage of your grade and the people that do it deprive themselves of the process of figuring out the correct answer which is probably the more important learning experience with regards to physics. In my school showing work and the answer was each worth 50 percent of the total homework grade and having the solutions manual (which most students do) would not help them by much.
As for exams, the only thing i can say life isn't fair. Morally this practice may be questionable by it definitely can't be enforced. Just accept that some people are more talented, intelligent, or connected than you. There's gonna be students that do poorly in undergrad but get in because their parents have connection into med schools. Is this fair? Eff no. Can you do anything about it? No.
The fact that study material exists should encourage you to make friends and get material off of them. I personally made that mistake my first semester and had to work my @55 off for ochem when there were many study aids such as chapter summaries, digital notes, and old exams basically telling you what concepts you need to focus on. I did make an A but putting in 2 times the effort as everyone else who did. Pls just suck it up and quit complaining on studentdoc.

 

[efle]

Copying the solutions manual directly is cheating, however homework is a relatively small percentage of your grade and the people that do it deprive themselves of the process of figuring out the correct answer which is probably the more important learning experience with regards to physics. In my school showing work and the answer was each worth 50 percent of the total homework grade and having the solutions manual (which most students do) would not help them by much.
As for exams, the only thing i can say life isn't fair. Morally this practice may be questionable by it definitely can't be enforced. Just accept that some people are more talented, intelligent, or connected than you. There's gonna be students that do poorly in undergrad but get in because their parents have connection into med schools. Is this fair? Eff no. Can you do anything about it? No.
The fact that study material exists should encourage you to make friends and get material off of them. I personally made that mistake my first semester and had to work my @55 off for ochem when there were many study aids such as chapter summaries, digital notes, and old exams basically telling you what concepts you need to focus on. I did make an A but putting in 2 times the effort as everyone else who did. Pls just suck it up and quit complaining on studentdoc.

Nobody is whining about how this hurt their grade or needs to be changed. It never cost me anything and I realize it can't be stopped. OP asked if it's cheating, I think it is

 

[cidem2065]

It's just study material. I think for it to be cheating it would have to be the actual exam and memorizing answer choices.

 

[Kochanie]

Its not about memorizing the answers, its about learning how a professor asks questions. How he expects problems to be worked out. Its about knowing how he tests and how he grades, not the answer to #6 is C.

That's not what you said though. You said some professors reuse questions.

 

[bioman1275]

That's not what you said though. You said some professors reuse questions.

Just because a professor might reuse questions, doesn't mean that you use the test for the single purpose of memorizing answers.

 

[optimistic3]

I'm glad you brought this up because it's been something I've thought about periodically all throughout undergrad. At my school, this type of passing on of old exams is rampant! Just about everyone seems to do it. Not only do they pass down exams but lab reports as well. Hearing all the people talk about using their friends' old lab reports to work off of shocked me more than exams. Of course I've also seen tons of blatant cheating during exams, too. I guess I went to a school full of cheaters.

I've had some professors be super strict about not allowing you to keep exams (although I know someone who still managed to take her exam home to give to a friend) and I've had some that let you take yours home. Some professors use totally different questions and some still reuse many of the same questions despite having their old tests out there.

So is it cheating? I'm still on the fence. What I do know is that with so much cheating going on and with curved classes, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. It sucks but that's the way it is.