How common is cheating?

[UCLAstudent]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I have a friend who goes to UCI, and her chem final was yesterday. Apparently, a student stole a copy of the final last week and sold it over the weekend to other students. Now her entire class has to retake the final on Wednesday night. I am sure it will be a much harder test.

Anyway, I found this to be really disturbing. Does this sort of thing happen often? I know lots of people probably cheat, but how many would actually SELL a copy of the exam to other students? 🙁

 

[Echinoidea]

When I took General Chem, I watched 2 girls next to me cheat all semester. I wanted to say something to the prof but I was afraid they'd just deny it and I'd look like an a$$hole. I'm actually ashamed I did'nt do anything. I was delighted to see them both fail Organic later on. (with a much more strict and observant professor)

 

[DoubleDoctor]

That is just totally stupid to risk having academic dishonesty on your transcripts and disciplinary records. I'm sure that will make them very attractive to med schools. I personally never knew of any cheating in any of my classes but to be honest, I was too worried about my performance to scrutinize what others were doing. It just strikes me as totally not worth the risk.

 

[~EnnI~]

Originally posted by UCLAstudent
I have a friend who goes to UCI, and her chem final was yesterday. Apparently, a student stole a copy of the final last week and sold it over the weekend to other students. Now her entire class has to retake the final on Wednesday night. I am sure it will be a much harder test.

Anyway, I found this to be really disturbing. Does this sort of thing happen often? I know lots of people probably cheat, but how many would actually SELL a copy of the exam to other students? 🙁

this actually happened before with one of the physics courses at UCLA (not any of the ones i was in)....it happened with one of those professors who got really good reviews and wasn't all that hard. i don't think anyone got caught but he ended up rewriting the final and ultimately punished everyone...

 

[descartes]

Two women at my college cheated in every hard science class we had together. They even got caught cheating in Physics, but the prof just told them not to do it again. One of the women graduated this year with a 4.0!! It makes me so mad. She didn't get into any medical schools though, cause she did so poorly on the MCAT. Guess she couldn't cheat on that one!

 

[UCLAstudent]

I just feel so bad for the people in my friend's class who have to retake the test... my friend was supposed to be finished with her finals on Monday. What if other people finished on Monday and already bought plane tickets to go home? Luckily, my friend doesn't live terrible far from UCI, but still... that stinks!

 

[Jillianrae]

Unfortunately, cheating is common at all levels in academia. In one of my classes, we had to have a specific type of scientific calculator that had no capacity for storage because there had been so many problems with students programming formulas into their graphing calculators. In another class, the teacher confided to us that he had caught one of his freshman students plagerizing an essay. When he confronted the student, the student first denied it and then blamed the professor.

Honestly though, what can we expect from our students when much of society overlooks cheating. Society, in general, seems to have a "look the other way" attitude toward cheating. "Oh well, it's just an answer or two, it's not like it's hurting anyone". In some cases, teachers have actually helped their students cheat. It's quite sad that cheating is all too common.

 

[Paws]

I have seen really terrible cheating at the school I did my postbacc work at. I often saw groups of people working together and it was really discouraging to be doing my best and struggling while these people were "acing" the courses. Unfortunately too, quite a few got into medschools.

I know that cheating is supposed to catch up with you, which is why I feel it's so much easier to just be honest, but I wonder with some people that they never seem to get caught.

 

[Moskeeto]

i was in a class and i was taking a test and the guy next to me kept bumpin my arm and telling me i had the wrong answers for questions. i thought that was nice of him and i ended up getting the bare minimum points in the class for a straight 'A'.

 

[lilywhites]

In one of the Intro to Philosophy classes at Northwestern, twelve people out of one hundred students were caught plagiarizing from websites on their take home final paper. The professor had two TAs for the class and they noticed some bizarre discrepancies in some of the students' writing styles. The TAs entered the students sentences in google, hit search, and were brought to the webpages that the students had cut and pasted their essays from. All twelve students received an F for the class.

 

[2ndave]

I heard about a guy at Purdue whose cousin went to Northwestern, and used to drive down to Purdue to take the guy's tests for him. They got busted eventually though! (According to the story, anyway.)

This is a little off the subject of cheating, but speaking of academic fraud, did anyone read the New Yorker article last year about the guy in his thirties who pretended he was a home-schooled 18 year old, and got into Princeton on a track scholarship? He spent four years there, did really well in his classes and won zillions of track medals before anyone caught on. Apparently he always wore a baseball cap to hide the fact that he was balding.

 

[klinzou]

Wah, what a bunching of whining pansies. I'm suer some of you have cheated and just won't fess up fro sake of your online ego. Flame away if you feel the need, but you know it.

 

[dmitrinyr]

I got a good story. In my orgo II final exam, right before the professor was about to give out the test papers, one of the TAs came into the room and announced to the class: Who's ever backpack it is in the women's bathroom better get up and get it now! Talk about some serious cheating, or just plane old stupid. At least no one got up to pick up her back of cheat notes. In that class we had so much cheating that as your taking the test you can hear the sound of paper being passed around the room from one cheater to another. I am just proud that I got the same grade or higher the right and honest way than going down to their level.

 

[coachB]

Originally posted by 2ndave
[This is a little off the subject of cheating, but speaking of academic fraud, did anyone read the New Yorker article last year about the guy in his thirties who pretended he was a home-schooled 18 year old, and got into Princeton on a track scholarship? He spent four years there, did really well in his classes and won zillions of track medals before anyone caught on. Apparently he always wore a baseball cap to hide the fact that he was balding. [/B]

probably want to check your source on this. last i checked, princeton didn't offer athletic scholarships.

i knew a guy who had a friend who....

 

[indo]

Last term during my physics final I was just about finished when the guy next to me packs up his stuff and hands me a copy of all the problems answered. I used it to check my answers since I was pretty much done.

I hate cheating though...I feel like a dirty ***** every time I even consider cheating.

 

[sl_jl]

now, this is a real story...

one of my friends paid a graduate student (not a TA) to write a midterm paper for her. This was an english literature class. The graduate student was part of this Writing Tutoring Center (something like that). This center was free of charge and was supposed to help undergraduates with their english papers (just basic grammar and structure things).... Well, it goes that the graduate student was desperate for money and my friend paid about $400-something dollars for the paper. It was a midterm paper, worth a lot of points. Sadly enough, my friend didn't get caught by the professor nor by the TAs. She basically got away with it. This happened in her junior year, and she told me this in her senior year. She tried to "recommend" it to me, however... I would be probably be embarrassed to look at the faces of the people who pulled this **** for her....She is at the moment attending at a very good medical school when she doesn't deserve it (let's just say that she is attending a school that is in the top 30 of USNews Magazine under Research). I wouldn't doubt it if she had other dirty schemes going on....

 

[indo]

Originally posted by sl_jl
now, this is a real story...

one of my friends paid a graduate student (not a TA) to write a midterm paper for her. This was an english literature class. The graduate student was part of this Writing Tutoring Center (something like that). This center was free of charge and was supposed to help undergraduates with their english papers (just basic grammar and structure things).... Well, it goes that the graduate student was desperate for money and my friend paid about $400-something dollars for the paper. It was a midterm paper, worth a lot of points. Sadly enough, my friend didn't get caught by the professor nor by the TAs. She basically got away with it. This happened in her junior year, and she told me this in her senior year. She tried to "recommend" it to me, however... I would be probably be embarrassed to look at the faces of the people who pulled this **** for her....She is at the moment attending at a very good medical school when she doesn't deserve it (let's just say that she is attending a school that is in the top 30 of USNews Magazine under Research). I wouldn't doubt it if she had other dirty schemes going on....

bitter?

 

[la ni?a]

🙁 I have heard about alot of cheating in my school. My friend told me that she knew a girl who would pay other really smart peps 500$ to take the hard finals like cal. and chem and that she was looking for someone this quarter. In my anthro class the TA moved a girl next to me and told me to keep an eye on my test, "this one cheats he said" - he moved her because she was cheating with her friend the entire final. During the test she kept looking at me I thought it was so funny because it was such a simple class

 

[DarkChild]

a couple vignettes:
1) in my intermediate micro economics class - the ENTIRE back row of the 60+ person class had their notes laid out by their feet!!! during the test you could hear them rustling through the pages. in fact at one point, one of the TA's actually stood on some of the kids cheat sheets... and didnt notice 😱
2) and this is unsubstantiated rumor - but what better place than the internet to spread it forth, but apparently[i/] in my univ.'s engineering school there was a significant amount of cheating that used to go on. of the more brazen acts were the korean mafia... they would put the smart guy at the center of a V and every one to his right and left behind him, would copy off him and the answers would pass down and back

 

[monkeyarms]

this one is a sort of heroic cheating story.....one of my buddies was a business major in college and had an accounting or economics or whatever final that he was stressing about...studied pretty hard for a week or so.....when he was taking the final he realized he would probably fail, so he just waited until the end of the test, folded it up, and slipped it into his bookbag on the way out.....subsequently relaxes at home for the month of december waiting for grades....gets an "incomplete" for the class.....calls the teacher and purely by virtue of being annoying convinces the professor that he turned in his test and THEY lost it......the teacher offers to give him the final again, but dude refuses on the basis that he can't put as much studying time in again since the new quarter is starting.......prof offers a C- but again dude refuses and demands he get at least the grade he had before the final.....ends up walking away with a B+ and some very valuable real world experience

 

[soonerpillow]

I had a Spanish class and we had to write a paper in Spanish about the Spanish version of the movie Toy Story. A lot of people wrote their paper in English, cut and pasted it into a translator website and turned it in. Several people didn't proof read the translation and ended up with some silly things. The translator translated character names, like Woody and Buzz. It also, for some reason would not translate the word "window," capitalizing it instead. The funniest thing, though, was somebody accidentally translated their paper into Portuguese instead of Spanish. The professor, clueless to it all, was so confused. She couldn't figure out why anybody would translate their paper into Portuguese in a Spanish class. It was classic. 😀

 

[IndyZX]

monkeyarms, that sounds like something id try to do, unsuccessfully.

 

[secretstang19]

Just a question - do all of you guys who are telling these stories NOT have honor codes at your schools?! I'm just blown away by the idea of professors or students KNOWING that a particular student is cheating, and then NOT really doing anything about it. Seems like the worst punishment levied in the anecdotes listed was someone getting an F in a class. At my college (and at a couple of others I know of in Virginia) if you get caught cheating, you're kicked out of school, no exceptions.

 

[meerasedai]

Definately, at my school (Mary Washington College in Virginia), honor is a big deal. I'm not saying that people do not cheat (though i haven't heard of anything in the academic world...) but if a professor catches you at it, you are brought before the Honor Council and very likely could be kicked out of school. It is definately not an idle threat.
Now in other areas of 'honor'... we did have a class president steal money from various organizations on campus. She has withdrawn from the college and is being pursued under criminal charges, I do beleive...

I'm shocked by the amount of stories I've read, as I have not witnessed anything of the likes since highschool!

 

[ASDIC]

in my stats class, the prof was a very old man. during the final exam, there was rampant cheating going on. everybody was talkin to each other and sharing answers. the prof did not do anything except to tell the class to be silent, but that didnt work. after the exam, i talked to the professor about the cheating problem in the class, and he said he couldnt do anything. He further added that his only solution was to make the exams harder and harder. so honest people like me suffer through such schemes.

 

[bjolly]

when I was 8 I got caught cheating on a 10 Commandments quiz in Sunday School. Guess if I'd studied I'd have know that was wrong.....

 

[PSU213]

In one of my physics courses computerized homework counted for 30% of your final grade. I found out the last week of class that there was a website from a previous semester that gave solutions to all the problems. Its not really cheating to use a resource like that, but I felt since some students knew about it and some didn't, it compromised the integrity of the curve. I emailed the professor about it and basically got nowhere. It would have been nice to know about these solutions to avoid that one glaring C on my record.

 

[PluckyDuk8]

In Gen Chem, you could tell that people had entered massive amounts of information into their calculator's memory. This really did make a big difference in the class because there were so many people doing it. I spoke to the professor about it..and even though he didn't really do anything about it when I was going through the class the next year he let people bring in a page of info and he made the exam in a different format so that it was more about comprehension of the material.

 

[Enkindu]

Every school I attended from 7th grade until I graduated from UVA had single sanction honor codes- you got the boot if you got caught cheating. Period. It seems to me that personal honor is nothing more than an issue of respect for yourself and other people. If you cheat to get ahead you have a character defect... and your actions erode what little good there is in human society. If you want to know why corporate America (Martha Stewart, Enron, Wordlcom) is in decay, look know farther than the "ends justify the means" mentality that is rotting academia.

I did my post-bacc 10 years after college and I noticed a big difference in the students from just ten years ago. I have always been proud of participating in a strict honor code- lately I've noticed a "whatever I have to do to get ahead" attitude in students. Cheating still makes me sick. At least I know that I earned my spot in med school honestly. Mark my words: if cheating becomes the norm in American academia, it's just a matter of time before our country rots from the inside out.

Sorry for my tone, but I obviously feel strongly about this issue. BTW, I'm a Virginian too- are we the only state that has schools with strict honor codes???

 

[SaraMac13]

I have an interesting story. A roomate of a friend of mine at a different school used to be pre-med, until he decided to do something really stupid. Apparently he cheated on a physics test and was caught by the professor. Instead of just accepting the consequences of that one mistake, he decided to try to fix it himself. Because of his campus job he happened to have keys to the office where the disciplinary report of his cheating was being kept. So he decided to break into the office and steal the report so that he could erase the incident from his record. He though that he got away with it, until campus police searched his apartment and found the disciplinary report. He was subsequently lost his job and was expelled from school (a very large and prestigious university) and is now trying to figure out what to do. At first he still thought that he could get into med school if he could just get into another school and apply, but I think that he is now realizing that an expulsion doesn't look very good on AMCAS. So, I guess some people get caught after all.

 

[Moskeeto]

okay, i just got out of a final that i know i did reallllllllllllllly bad on. i was a half hour late and i took a crapshoot and didnt study a certain portion of it becuase it didn't seem like it would be on there and surprise it was. Well, i needed to do pretty well to pass this class, so i'm pretty pissed at myself right now. Mostly because the professor wasn't even in there for the test and people all around me had their books and notes out and were totatly cheating. ****, i couldn't get myself to do it, i don't know what the hell is wrong with me. if i flunk this, i'm gonna be totally pissed that i didn't cheat, i don't know why i didn't. i just kept thinking it was wrong and i wanted to flunk on my own instead of getting caught cheating and given an automatic F, also i thought about this thread and how lame the people were that did cheat and how it didn't seem worth it. damn you sdn. I actually went as far as unzipping my backpack, but i couldn't reach in there to pull out the notes. 😡

 

[2ndave]

Originally posted by coachB
probably want to check your source on this. last i checked, princeton didn't offer athletic scholarships.

i knew a guy who had a friend who....

Dude, check the sources yourself before you try to discredit my anectdote. It was in the New Yorker, sometime around the fall of 2001. Maybe he didn't get a track _scholarship_--but who cares whether I got the details absolutely perfect, here in the CHEATING thread... I was just sharing a story I read about and asking if anyone else had read it.

You can read about this guy yourself, and the movie that was apparently made about him, in the March 3, 2002 edition of the San Jose Mercury News:

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/2786449.htm

 

[deez4life]

Originally posted by secretstang19
At my college (and at a couple of others I know of in Virginia) if you get caught cheating, you're kicked out of school, no exceptions.

ditto, UVA

 

[mamie]

Fall 1999, Organic I

First story:

Now, everyone at my school who was a science major had to to take Organic I and II, there was no way around it. Therefore, you had a pretty decent mix of students in the class, meaning those who were gunners and those who didn't give a damn. I was kind of in between. Anyway, we were about to take our second test of the semester (the one that would determine whether you kept going or dropped the class) and as usual we lined up and the prof. handed us the tests.
Needless to say you could feel the panic in the room. All 120 of us were abouty to be utterly violated by this test. You could see the prof. smiling with glee as everyone just stared at the questions in disbelief. I was about to charge the test to the game, when I noticed the girl next to me starting to shake. She then stood up and calmly walked out of the lecture hall. Seconds later, the fire alarm went off. By this time, I'm literally on my knees thanking God for this divine intervention.

However, the prof woouldn't let us out, even though the alarm is blaring and sirens are going off, until the Fire Dept. shows up and forces us out. Needless to say, the prof. was mad, and we got to take an all new test the next class day. By that time, however, we were all prepared.

Anyway, even though this is not directly cheating, it was a pretty bold and courageous move. The girl who pulled the alarm ended up getting a ticket and dropped the class.

 

[mamie]

Story #2

Organic I: Final

One of my line brothers goes to one of the prof. of the Organic I course for help with the final exam. JP (line brother) asks if there is any excercises that he can do to better himself for the coming final. Dr. W. (organic prof) says sure, here is an old test you can have. Unfortunately, Dr. W. handed JP the final that we were going to take in a few days. JP sees the mistake, but being the person he is thanks the Dr. W. and goes on his way.

FastForward to a few days later: Everyone and their mama has a copy of the test and has memorized it inside and out. So everyone goes to take the test. Now remember, this is a four hour test, consisting of over 100 question. But, instead of sticking it out, idiots finish the test in the 15 min. and hand it in.

Now the head of the course knows that something is not right b/c of this, and on further questioning finds out about the gaff by his colleague.

In short, the Dr. W. was fired, JP is now in med school, and all the final scores were negated. You either kept the grade you had before the final, or you had to take a new test over the Christmas break.

 

[Doc Ivy]

It's funny you should tell that fire alarm story...
The first thing that popped into my head when I heard about the recent bomb at Yale, was that some poor Law student couldn't handle the 100% final exam and cracked

 

[HessExpress]

I just took a general chemistry exam earlier this morning...our professor had to leave early, but most of us were not finished with our exams. So...he put us in a class room by ourselves, and he left and told us to simply put our exams under his office door when we were done...
NONE of us cheated, and I think this shows that college students can be and are mature enough not to.😉

 

[Moskeeto]

Originally posted by HessExpress
I just took a general chemistry exam earlier this morning...our professor had to leave early, but most of us were not finished with our exams. So...he put us in a class room by ourselves, and he left and told us to simply put our exams under his office door when we were done...
NONE of us cheated, and I think this shows that college students can be and are mature enough not to.😉

in my class this morning, (see above post) i kept think that maybe since i was late the prof told us we could use our notes, because seriously people had their books and notes on their desks, it was insanely obvious cheating. but you could tell by the way that other students were looking at them that they had to be cheating, there was a lot of people frustrated and rolling there eyes at the people with notes. and yes we have an honor code at UCD.