Appropriate interview answer to a cheating friend question

[md2k14]

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I just wanted to see if general sdn population agrees with my response to: "what would you do if you see your good friend cheating?" I would say that the first time, I would talk to him and ask him to not cheat again because its not fair for other students. And if he does it again, i would report him to the administration/lecturer.

Would you rather say that you would report him the first time you see him because cheating is unacceptable no matter hwo does it or would you rather give the cheating friend another chance?

 

[TopSecret]

I just wanted to see if general sdn population agrees with my response to: "what would you do if you see your good friend cheating?" I would say that the first time, I would talk to him and ask him to not cheat again because its not fair for other students. And if he does it again, i would report him to the administration/lecturer.

Would you rather say that you would report him the first time you see him because cheating is unacceptable no matter hwo does it or would you rather give the cheating friend another chance?

The correct answer is to follow established protocol. If there is no protocol, then it's probably best to ask the dean on what to do and follow his or her suggestion.

 

[Compass]

I just wanted to see if general sdn population agrees with my response to: "what would you do if you see your good friend cheating?" I would say that the first time, I would talk to him and ask him to not cheat again because its not fair for other students. And if he does it again, i would report him to the administration/lecturer.

Would you rather say that you would report him the first time you see him because cheating is unacceptable no matter hwo does it or would you rather give the cheating friend another chance?

Reporting the first time IS the most defensible answer. It allows no leeway and instead turns the punishment to the Academic Integrity Board or whoever handles the cheating offense.

Imagine THIS situation:

Your boyfriend/girlfriend cheats on you. Are you going to let him/her walk off and say "Oh, just don't do it again?"

I'll put this in perspective of what Faculty see:

http://www.ctl.sas.upenn.edu/auth/FacultyFAQ.htm#report

By the same token, if one person is cheating in a class, there is good reason to believe that someone else is cheating too. Faculty members do not have the perspective necessary to appreciate the ramifications of a single case of cheating.

The main type of violation of Academic Integrity that I have seen in our department is cheating on exams. In the interest of fairness to the student, my inclination is to report all reasonably well documented instances of cheating so that they can be thoroughly investigated by people who have expertise in this area.

Reporting the cheating raises the punishment for cheating, which hopefully provides some deterrent to potential cheaters. Interactions with OSC may lead to positive behavioral changes in people with a cheating past.

Professors often hesitate to start a case because they fear the continual begging: `do not wreck my career' and `I am not a cheater' from worried students, innocent and guilty alike. It can come close to stalking. It makes faculty upset, sad, worried, torn - all the things that make one hold back from starting a fuss in the first place.

If you wish, tailor your response to the target school's academic integrity rules. However, your fallback should always favor full disclosure. Not doing so can be seen negatively from an academic standpoint.

 

[TopSecret]

Reporting the first time IS the most defensible answer. It allows no leeway and instead turns the punishment to the Academic Integrity Board or whoever handles the cheating offense.

Imagine THIS situation:

Your boyfriend/girlfriend cheats on you. Are you going to let him/her walk off and say "Oh, just don't do it again?"

I'll put this in perspective of what Faculty see:

http://www.ctl.sas.upenn.edu/auth/FacultyFAQ.htm#report







If you wish, tailor your response to the target school's academic integrity rules. However, your fallback should always favor full disclosure. Not doing so can be seen negatively from an academic standpoint.

This is an important point because there may come a time when you will have to blow the whistle on fraud and corruption and the stakes will be much higher and the consequences, including retaliation against you, will be much more serious.

 

[Abdullaah]

Theres a thread thats on the exact same topic and its still fresh too 😕. There was also another one before that... why is everyone so worried about their friends cheating?!

Instead of these individual questions, I think itd be better if someone makes (or searches for) a thread on interview questions in general and how to answer them. That'd be very useful.

 

[futuredoctor10]

Apparently this question must be asked alot in interviews because it keeps popping up everywhere!

 

[futuredoctor10]

Instead of these individual questions, I think itd be better if someone makes (or searches for) a thread on interview questions in general and how to answer them. That'd be very useful.

Yep I agree, such a thread would be very useful.

 

[dmblue]

A friend of mine caught his friend cheating. He got a hold of some school letterhead and wrote a letter as if he were the dean to his friend. The kid never cheated again.

 

[Compass]

A friend of mine caught his friend cheating. He got a hold of some school letterhead and wrote a letter as if he were the dean to his friend. The kid never cheated again.

Brilliant! A practical solution. Thinking outside of the box makes moral dilemmas less problematic.

 

[LiveUninhibited]

The letterhead idea is awesome. I would strongly prefer to do something like that, though if asked the question on an interview I wouldn't say that.

Apparently this question must be asked alot in interviews because it keeps popping up everywhere!

One of my classmates from undergrad was asked this prior to getting into a school. She said she'd encourage them to turn themselves in and if they refused she would turn them in. She got in, and she seems to believe they liked her answer.

 

[MedKiddo]

i would say this question doesnt apply to me. when i take tests i only look straight down at my paper, so i wouldnt even know my friend was cheating.😛

 

[LiveUninhibited]

i would say this question doesnt apply to me. when i take tests i only look straight down at my paper, so i wouldnt even know my friend was cheating.😛

That might be seen as dodging the question...

 

[Compass]

i would say this question doesnt apply to me. when i take tests i only look straight down at my paper, so i wouldnt even know my friend was cheating.😛

Your loss.

Not answering this question is like giving the interviewer a frozen chicken.

Answering this question is like giving the interviewer a slice of chicken cooked in a George Foreman grill.

Answering this question well is like giving the interviewer a giant chicken cooked precisely at 400*F for 12 hours while juiced properly with lemon and pepper. Hopefully, your interviewer isn't a vegetarian and is wearing cooking gloves.

 

[guestdoc]

yeah, but one should answer the question honestly, right? if they don't look at other papers, then they don't look at other papers (I always make it a point not to look around during tests as well, medkiddo)! 😀

I had this question on an interview, answered it honestly (if I happened to see cheating of my best friend, I would talk to them about it and report it if they didn't own up to it), had the question reworded ten times so that my answers would never work, and was later rejected. Just hope you get a nice/good interviewer

 

[Ignition]

yeah, but one should answer the question honestly, right? if they don't look at other papers, then they don't look at other papers (I always make it a point not to look around during tests as well, medkiddo)! 😀

I had this question on an interview, answered it honestly (if I happened to see cheating of my best friend, I would talk to them about it and report it if they didn't own up to it), had the question reworded ten times so that my answers would never work, and was later rejected. Just hope you get a nice/good interviewer

Just out of curiosity, how did they keep manipulating the question so your answer no longer worked?

 

[mirrorpair]

I've been teaching a class over the summer and I have to go to meetings--a recent one was about cheating. In my department the attitude is that the punishments the school gives out are unduly harsh. The most common scenario is that a student will ask for a regrade but they'll change the answers to the correct one; the school calls this 'falsification' and will suspend the student for a year (oddly enough, cheating on a test gives you less punishment--academic probation and failing the class, which you can retake anyway and wipe the failed grade away). I used to think if a student is freaked out and changes an answer they need to fail the class but a year suspension is a bit much. The TAs and the profs know this and we usually let cheating slide because if we dole out the punishment we are liable to get sued if the student retaliates--so nothing usually gets done.

Anyway, I've heard some crazy stories during that meeting. One kid was caught and admitted he never took a test in 3 years because he always had ringers (a lot of frats use ringers as hazing). The general trend is that a student gets caught and will slide away because most teachers don't like how excessive the punishments are--then the student feels they got away with it and cheat more. Apparently the only way they stop is by having the hammer come down very hard.

I asked the question 'if a student gets caught, doesn't it ruin their chances for med school/dental school/etc'? Surprisingly, it doesn't. I'm at a top 15 school and the med school doesn't really care if you get caught cheating once (unless it's really egregious). As long as you're repentant you can slide. Moreover, I heard that a lot of kids are relieved when they get caught cheating because they never wanted to go to med school and now they can tell their parents it is impossible.

So my attitude has changed a bit--now I'm a bit more vigilant about cheating and I don't mind if the punishment is excessive because it doesn't ruin everything and apparently it's the only way to setting them straight. Moreover they can grow from it.

 

[guestdoc]

Just out of curiosity, how did they keep manipulating the question so your answer no longer worked?

I can't remember it all exactly as it was last fall, but something along the lines of whenever I would give an answer the interviewer would arbitrarily change an aspect of the scenario that would make my answer impossible, and then ask what I would do under the new hypothetical situation. E.g. my answer to what I would do if I saw my best friend cheating might have been something along the lines of talking with the friend and saying that I saw him or her cheating, others probably also saw, and that they should turn himself in (or I would have to turn them in) type thing. The interviewer would then change the question by saying that I couldn't get ahold of my friend, and ask what I would do. Then change it so that I couldn't get ahold of an administrator and ask again. By the end, the hypothetical situation was that I had to stand up in the middle of the test and call my friend out or not or something crazy like that.

By that point it was so outrageously hypothetical that we might as well have pretended that I wasn't friends with anybody taking the test, I was actually the proctor of the test, and of course I would have turned in any dirty, cheating scumbag. 🙄

From talking with the other interviewees that day (and from others from my UG who intervied other days at that med school), it became painfully obvious that my experience could have been completely different (and much more enjoyable) if I would have had an interviewer more like theirs. 🙁

 

[LiveUninhibited]

I've been teaching a class over the summer and I have to go to meetings--a recent one was about cheating. In my department the attitude is that the punishments the school gives out are unduly harsh. The most common scenario is that a student will ask for a regrade but they'll change the answers to the correct one; the school calls this 'falsification' and will suspend the student for a year (oddly enough, cheating on a test gives you less punishment--academic probation and failing the class, which you can retake anyway and wipe the failed grade away). I used to think if a student is freaked out and changes an answer they need to fail the class but a year suspension is a bit much. The TAs and the profs know this and we usually let cheating slide because if we dole out the punishment we are liable to get sued if the student retaliates--so nothing usually gets done.

Anyway, I've heard some crazy stories during that meeting. One kid was caught and admitted he never took a test in 3 years because he always had ringers (a lot of frats use ringers as hazing). The general trend is that a student gets caught and will slide away because most teachers don't like how excessive the punishments are--then the student feels they got away with it and cheat more. Apparently the only way they stop is by having the hammer come down very hard.

I asked the question 'if a student gets caught, doesn't it ruin their chances for med school/dental school/etc'? Surprisingly, it doesn't. I'm at a top 15 school and the med school doesn't really care if you get caught cheating once (unless it's really egregious). As long as you're repentant you can slide. Moreover, I heard that a lot of kids are relieved when they get caught cheating because they never wanted to go to med school and now they can tell their parents it is impossible.

So my attitude has changed a bit--now I'm a bit more vigilant about cheating and I don't mind if the punishment is excessive because it doesn't ruin everything and apparently it's the only way to setting them straight. Moreover they can grow from it.

In order for deterrence to work, the most important thing you need is certainty of getting caught. Yes, the punishment must be sufficiently severe, but people who try to squelch cheating inappropriately increase the punishment to ridiculous extremes instead of make it more likely that somebody will get caught. In order to minimize cheating, you would need to increase the certainty of getting caught to better than 1 in 3. Appropriate punishment could simply be an F for the test, which may mean an F for the course. With an appropriate punishment people are less likely to feel bad about calling somebody out.