Is the Cheating Insane in your classes ?

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integralx2

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Is this cheating as insane in my school as it is in yours. Its literally out of hand. I am just wondering is there hardcore cheating in medical school too ( I have feeling there probably is) ? :scared:
 
Most people in my school are scared to do anything like that because of the possibility of being caught and having that on your record/kicked out of school. You worked pretty hard to get up to med school and you don't want to F it up by doing something dumb like that. No residency director is going to want you with an academic dishonesty violation in there.
 
For the undergrads, you'll have it occasionally...

But among the graduate students (overwhelming majority from China or India)...ugh. It sucks to see them get similar results as the people who actually deserved it.
 
SPika said:
For the undergrads, you'll have it occasionally...

But among the graduate students (overwhelming majority from China or India)...ugh. It sucks to see them get similar results as the people who actually deserved it.
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hahah I feel your pain on that.
 
The same people who get away with it in college will try it in medical school. Once you get used to cheating it is hard to stop, since that is what got you there in the first place. We can only hope that they will get filtered out by the more secure exams, like the USMLE. Even if they make it past the boards, eventually it will catch up with them when they actually have to know stuff, you know, for their jobs. If they somehow end up being competent and ethical physicians, then I guess it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

In answer to your question: it happens, though not quite as much, and they get caught at about the same rate as in undergrad. Sometimes they just fail and have to retake, depending on circumstances.
 
It happens. People cheat.

I'd love to see their MCAT scores, though. And other secure exams.
 
I see very little cheating at my school. But sadly it does still happen, just not much.
 
Cheating at my school constitutes a warning and not always a mark on your record. I think you need cheat 3x at my school to finally be expelled. I worked in the Behavior Committee for several years and the only student we expelled in that time was for hacking into a Professor's computer and changing grades. The kid was a Chinese computer genius and the government charged him with a felony.

But yea....cheating happens occassionally and the student's get an "E" for a grade.
 
I think I'm pretty on the pulse of the med school, and I seem like the kind of dude who would cheat, but I've never once heard even a sniff of it. Might be b/c the program really preaches a non-competitive attitude, might be b/c if anyone really wanted to it would be a breeze to pull off. Probably b/c it just isn't worth it- fail and repeat the year better than be caught cheating and never be admitted to school again.
 
The cheating in my physics (for sci. and eng.) class was rampant. We were not allowed any formulas/notes. We were, however, allowed a TI-83 level calculator or higher. People just put all their notes in their calc.
 
UtahNano said:
The cheating in my physics (for sci. and eng.) class was rampant. We were not allowed any formulas/notes. We were, however, allowed a TI-83 level calculator or higher. People just put all their notes in their calc.
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Any class where we were allowed to use a graphing calculator also required us to clear the memory on the calculator before the test.

I miss phoenix and tetris so much...
 
At my school, we had a situation with our "clickers" a few years ago (clickers = a small touch-pad remote, that the prof uses to ask you multiple-choice questions; you send which letter you think is the answer, and it usually counts as a small percent of your grade). I was in the morning lecture, and the people in my class would send the answers for the clicker questions to the afternoon lecture. Technically, this is cheating, and my professor eventually caught on. He changed around the answer for each lecture, and tested how many people put the answer that was correct in the morning lectures' clickers. Those people were charged with academic dishonesty, but I believe that they reduced the penalty and just had everyone write an essay to get it removed from their records (since he charged around 80 people with it).
 
I caught a girl cheating on an exam for an upper division bio class. A year later, me and a few other TA's that proctored that same exam decided to look her up on face book, ***** was in medschool!
 
dontforgetxx said:
At my school, we had a situation with our "clickers" a few years ago (clickers = a small touch-pad remote, that the prof uses to ask you multiple-choice questions; you send which letter you think is the answer, and it usually counts as a small percent of your grade). I was in the morning lecture, and the people in my class would send the answers for the clicker questions to the afternoon lecture. Technically, this is cheating, and my professor eventually caught on. He changed around the answer for each lecture, and tested how many people put the answer that was correct in the morning lectures' clickers. Those people were charged with academic dishonesty, but I believe that they reduced the penalty and just had everyone write an essay to get it removed from their records (since he charged around 80 people with it).
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We use clickers here at UCI and I'm familiar with the mechanics. The situation you described above sounds rather fabricated considering by chance alone individuals may input any of the answer choices and you can't really hold someone accountable for guessing wrong.

One common way to cheat with clickers that I've seen happen is lending your clicker (which is registered to your student ID) to a friend, so you don't have to come to class and still get the points for not being there. Some classes don't even require the right answer, just that you participated.
 
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b2sun said:
I caught a girl cheating on an exam for an upper division bio class. A year later, me and a few other TA's that proctored that same exam decided to look her up on face book, ***** was in medschool!
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What happened to her during the exam? Did she get reprimanded?
 
Although cheating is always wrong I do feel that a good professor can make it almost impossible to cheat / severely reduce the cheating. When professors have the same quizzes in multiple classes or repeat large portions of tests from previous years they honestly are just enabling the cheaters. Heck, in my calculus course my TA didn't even clear our calculators. Though it is ultimately the student's fault/decision I do feel that professors are obligated to at least make it difficult to cheat in their courses.

Honestly though I don't think many people cheat on exams at my university (large public school) most of the cheating is on assignments / quizzes.
 
Slowpoke said:
We use clickers here at UCI and I'm familiar with the mechanics. The situation you described above sounds rather fabricated considering by chance alone individuals may input any of the answer choices and you can't really hold someone accountable for guessing wrong.

One common way to cheat with clickers that I've seen happen is lending your clicker to a friend who doesn't come to class so they still get the points for not being there and having the friend click for them.
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That's exactly why so many people were frustrated with it, and why the Academic Judiciary allowed for it to be removed by writing a simple essay. On one hand, you cannot prove who cheated and who didn't, because it's real easy to just guess a letter-choice when you don't know the answer. But on the other hand, my professor knew that there was a large majority of the people in the other class cheating. It wasn't a coincidence that 90% of the afternoon class got the clicker question right. In the end, the professor can choose what he wants to do. Academic dishonesty is a big deal, so the only reason that the Academic Judiciary was a little bit more lenient about it was because you really couldn't prove who cheated or not.

Also, I've seen what you're talking about. A lot of people do that here too, especially because I go to a large public school, where the classes can reach up to 500 people. I've seen my professor walking around in the audience sometimes to make sure nobody has more than one clicker.
 
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dontforgetxx said:
That's exactly why so many people were frustrated with it, and why the Academic Judiciary allowed for it to be removed by writing a simple essay. On one hand, you cannot prove who cheated and who didn't, because it's real easy to just guess an letter-choice when you don't know the answer. But on the other hand, my professor knew that there was a large majority of the people in the other class cheating. It wasn't a coincidence that 90% of the afternoon class got the clicker question right. In the end, the professor can choose what he wants to do. Academic dishonesty is a big deal, so the only reason that the Academic Judiciary was a little bit more lenient about it was because you really couldn't prove who cheated or not.
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I don't mind the clickers at all. For the most part the clickers allow for a real-time assessment of the material which sometimes can allow professors to witness first-hand if they are moving too fast through the material by placing multiple choice questions throughout the lecture. However, I don't agree with giving points for participating and/or answering correctly because that is not the purpose.

I'm under the impression they simply give meager points for participating or answering correctly because students won't have an incentive to dish out the 30-40 bucks for it. It's a stupid system that hopefully in the future they will just install buttons on each seat rather than requiring students to purchase it for a few classes and giving the incentive of 5% of the total class grade.
 
Slowpoke said:
I don't mind the clickers at all. For the most part the clickers allow for a real-time assessment of the material which sometimes can allow professors to witness first-hand if they are moving too fast through the material by placing multiple choice questions throughout the lecture. However, I don't agree with giving points for participating and/or answering correctly because that is not the purpose.

I'm under the impression they simply give meager points for participating or answering correctly because students won't have an incentive to dish out the 30-40 bucks for it. It's a stupid system that hopefully in the future they will just install buttons on each seat rather than requiring students to purchase it for a few classes and giving the incentive of 5% of the total class grade.
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I agree, it's a terrible system. I can't tell you how many times my clicker battery has died right in the middle of class, and even if I know the answer, I can't put it in. It's good for the professor to see where his class is at, and how much they're understanding the material, so that maybe he can even build the tests around that. But it shouldn't be calculated into your final grade. Giving out points to the kid next to you, because he remembered to pack 2 extra AA batteries is a little bit senseless, IMO.
 
Cheating is like an epidemic at my school. Any class you want to take, all you have to do is let one friend know and he/she will hand over all of their old labs, quizzes and exams. For example, when you take Chemistry 2, assuming your part of some Math/Chem club or any religious club/organization on campus or have a friend who's part of one, you can be sure your 'brothers' and 'sisters' will hook you up exams/labs/quizzes dating all the way back to 1999. And since the profs have been teaching for much longer than that, you could reasonably expect the exam questions to either be EXACTLY the same or a slightly different. And not just one or two people had these exams - well over 95% of the class did. I remember googling the name of one of the kids on the lab reports from 1999 (I was really bored) and I was surprised to find out he's a freakin' dermatologist in Long Island now 😱. And in terms of actual-day-of-the-test cheating, we get ALOTT of that too. One kid who actually studied would tell the professor that they had a conflicting class so they could take the exam in the early morning. Then word would spread like rapid-fire throughout the school about which old tests were similar in test format to the actual thing (i.e. Chem 2 Final Spring 2005 etc.) One of my friends also told me how she uses her huge-a** blackberry to cheat with on MATH EXAMS (I've yet to figure out how she's able to do that and without getting caught)😕😕 And trust me, some of these pre-med kids will cheat their way to school and/or pay for very expensive tutoring and still get 35+ on their MCATs... Its sad but true and I've seen it happen. 🙁
 
At my school cheating is not inane but it happens. It doesn't really bother me or any of my professors. They know it's going to happen so they just kind of brush it off.
 
Recieving previous exams or tips from students who have taken it before is something that can't be reasonably monitored very well. Perhaps, this is why at my school Professors openly post up their old exams as a way to keep a level-playing field.

DrPrincess01 said:
Cheating is like an epidemic at my school. Any class you want to take, all you have to do is let one friend know and he/she will hand over all of their old labs, quizzes and exams. For example, when you take Chemistry 2, assuming your part of some Math/Chem club or any religious club/organization on campus or have a friend who's part of one, you can be sure your 'brothers' and 'sisters' will hook you up exams/labs/quizzes dating all the way back to 1999. And since the profs have been teaching for much longer than that, you could reasonably expect the exam questions to either be EXACTLY the same or a slightly different. And not just one or two people had these exams - well over 95% of the class did. I remember googling the name of one of the kids on the lab reports from 1999 (I was really bored) and I was surprised to find out he's a freakin' dermatologist in Long Island now 😱. And in terms of actual-day-of-the-test cheating, we get ALOTT of that too. One kid who actually studied would tell the professor that they had a conflicting class so they could take the exam in the early morning. Then word would spread like rapid-fire throughout the school about which old tests were similar in test format to the actual thing (i.e. Chem 2 Final Spring 2005 etc.) One of my friends also told me how she uses her huge-a** blackberry to cheat with on MATH EXAMS (I've yet to figure out how she's able to do that and without getting caught)😕😕 And trust me, some of these pre-med kids will cheat their way to school and/or pay for very expensive tutoring and still get 35+ on their MCATs... Its sad but true and I've seen it happen. 🙁
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Slowpoke said:
Recieving previous exams or tips from students who have taken it before is something that can't be reasonably monitored very well. Perhaps, this is why at my school Professors openly post up their old exams as a way to keep a level-playing field.
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In most classes, its not a problem really but for many of my Chemistry classes and even one Bio class I took, the professors have been teaching for 30 or more years, have kept the exam questions the same for all these years. They never hand back exams, they just post your grade next to your SSN but students have managed to somehow get all the q's and thus some students fail miserably (because the exams are incredibly tricky) and the others get perfect 100s. The professor has questions that are designed like Biology IQ questions. For example in my Molec Bio class, I had a 71 which according to previous curves would have gotten me an A+ with Honors, but since other students had the questions and worked out the answers, they had 99s and 100s which led my grade to be forced down to a C. And my professor sat there thinking he had a class full of geniuses, Yeah that sucks 👎
 
But among the graduate students (overwhelming majority from China or India)...ugh. It sucks to see them get similar results as the people who actually deserved it.
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I would say even undergrads, my school has a lot of international undergraduates, It really annoys me when I see people cheating on a test...but I guess thats part of life some people always find an easy way out and get away with it...
 
Just got out of a biology exam. I decided to look around to see if anyone was cheating. The professor had his computer out and was doing something on it, and when I looked around, four or five people had their cell phones out and were texting. Another one had a page of notes under her paper, from which she dutifully sought her answers. Two students switched versions of the test (there were two) so they could look off their neighbors. And one more student had his iPod out and was obviously scrolling it for information.

I have to admit, I was pretty shocked. But then, this is summer session. My school accepts students from all our state's universities for summer session, mostly athletes. I've never had this much cheating in a non-summer class. On the plus side, the professor must've noticed it. Whenever a cheater came up to turn in his/her exam, the professor accepted it and tossed it in a separate box away from the other exams. Here's hoping he caught them all!
 
It happens every now and then at my school, but for most of the upper level classes the smart students have too much to risk/lose so it's usually the people that would be pulling C's anyway that are trying to cheat up to a B. And it doesn't really bother me, they risk a hell of a lot doing it and they have to study for standardized tests anyway. If you're really that upset by it I say go make your own cheat sheet and good luck
 
Some schools have a depressingly lax attitude toward plagiarism. My alma mater had a professor whose attitude was essentially "what's the big deal?"

Conversely, the prof who basically trained me and my friends likened plagiarism in his class unto raping his daughter, swearing he would exhaust every resource he had available to get you kicked out on your ass if you plagiarized in his jurisdiction.
 
My football coach told me freshman year, "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'! But, if you get caught I'll make sure you get kicked outta school".
 
Astarael said:
Any class where we were allowed to use a graphing calculator also required us to clear the memory on the calculator before the test.

I miss phoenix and tetris so much...
Click to expand...

DUH! archive those games so they don't get deleted. I believe its only the RAM and unarchived stuff they can delete? You can also hide the programs and activate them later lol...

Don't judge me ,I don't cheat HONEST

In regards to your question, OP. Cheating is fairly common and outrageous at times! For physics, all the sections have one exam on Friday, people pay others to take the exam for them - they only recently had the rule to bring IDs to exams. Kids even scan their exams, change answers, and submit them for regrading - use the same color markers and everything!
 
Do you guys turn people in?

Last year I was taking summer biochem and it was me and this girl vying for highest grade in the class. On one test I got up to ask the teacher a question and I turned around and I saw her looking at someone else's paper. I didn't care so much about having the highest grade (though he did write in his rec letter that I was #2), but it just wasn't fair, and it pissed me off. The only reason I didn't say anything was that it's a pretty serious accusation and it would be my word against hers.

It doesn't matter anymore, but just out of curiosity what would you have done in that situation?
 
Amrazzz said:
DUH! archive those games so they don't get deleted. I believe its only the RAM and unarchived stuff they can delete? You can also hide the programs and activate them later lol...

Don't judge me ,I don't cheat HONEST

In regards to your question, OP. Cheating is fairly common and outrageous at times! For physics, all the sections have one exam on Friday, people pay others to take the exam for them - they only recently had the rule to bring IDs to exams. Kids even scan their exams, change answers, and submit them for regrading - use the same color markers and everything!
Click to expand...

One of my classes last year had your overall grade based off of 4 exams and a final. After the third test I noticed I got a 47% and was pretty much like 😕 after seeing the grade on the grade posting site. It turns out one of the TA's decided to not grade an attached page which had 2/4 of my answers for the exam. I brought it to the professor later that week and he corrected and gave me my exam grade.

It turns out it was no problem because they photocopy ALL exams written by students so they can tell if someone changes an answer and goes back to them with a new paper or whatever... so I wouldn't rely on scanning it.
 
I had a friend in undergrad who got a call from the organic professor in the afternoon after the final exam. The professor said that he had never turned in his final, and accused him of being party to cheating. My friend was shocked, and asked how that made sense, since he would clearly fail if he didn't turn in the final. He came in, and they grilled him for a bit, and he said he would take it again right in the office to prove that he hadn't cheated (he was one of the top students in the class). Eventually they found it that evening, except someone had switched out the cover sheet with his name on it for their own. Apparently that person had been doing it all year, except this time the other cover sheet didn't make it on to another test. The cheater got expelled, and good riddance.
 
I initially attended Johns Hopkins University as an undergraduate, then studied medicine at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. I was up for a scholarship at the Mayo Clinic, however, during my medical education, I was caught cheating by a co-student named Philip Weber who ultimately got me expelled. I then attended the University of Michigan in order to finish my medical study.

Now I run the department of diagnostic medicine at a very prestigious hospital in New Jersey. 😎
 
At my school, there's a few people in the classes ahead of me that are pretty much known for their rampant cheating. I can't say I have personally witnessed it so I wouldn't know if there's much truth to it. Sadly, from what I've heard, they've been caught and turned in, but nothing really gets done about it. I've heard stories that range from essays being pre-written on desks to cheating off of their "friend" (the Central American, required to keep a 4.0 exchange student). Just lovely...

Not that it's worth anything, but I'm new by the way.
 
Cheating is dealt with very strongly at my school and it usually doesn't happen (private religious uni). Sometimes you'll hear the occasional "let me see your quiz, I didn't read" for a freshman english class but in gen science classes it's impossible to cheat even if you wanted to.

My bio prof started off the final with a story about a girl who broke into his office to steal the test paper and how she wanted to go to med school and got expelled, etc...

My gen bio class was a little over 50 students and there was the prof and two TAs watching like hawks during the final (and every regular exam).

The rampant cheating at some public schools is horrifying, and it makes me glad that I didn't go to one. I'm always the one that would never cheat since I'm paranoid about getting caught. It would be the end of everything for me. Don't cheat kids.
 
I had to take my Physics II final sitting infront of two dumb valley girls that were talking/giving answers to each other the whole time. The TA knew it, but I think it was a mixture of them being incredibly hot, as well as dumb as rocks, that made him not care. I didn't either, because after about 10 minutes of listening to their answers, I knew they were getting every question wrong. Hopefully the guy they sit behind next semester will help them out 😀.
 
DrDrummer said:
I initially attended Johns Hopkins University as an undergraduate, then studied medicine at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. I was up for a scholarship at the Mayo Clinic, however, during my medical education, I was caught cheating by a co-student named Philip Weber who ultimately got me expelled. I then attended the University of Michigan in order to finish my medical study.

Now I run the department of diagnostic medicine at a very prestigious hospital in New Jersey. 😎
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Orly-factor.jpg
 
BigRedder said:
I had a friend in undergrad who got a call from the organic professor in the afternoon after the final exam. The professor said that he had never turned in his final, and accused him of being party to cheating. My friend was shocked, and asked how that made sense, since he would clearly fail if he didn't turn in the final. He came in, and they grilled him for a bit, and he said he would take it again right in the office to prove that he hadn't cheated (he was one of the top students in the class). Eventually they found it that evening, except someone had switched out the cover sheet with his name on it for their own. Apparently that person had been doing it all year, except this time the other cover sheet didn't make it on to another test. The cheater got expelled, and good riddance.
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From the name, I assume you went to Cornell?

Either Sogah or Rutledge told us this story and I didn't believe them lol, I guess it really happened!
 
Not to sound racist, but I've noticed the most cheating among international Chinese students in my science classes -- multiple times in my gen chem 1 class, when we were lined up to hand our tests in, I would notice students speaking in Chinese to each other and erasing answers on their bubble sheets :slap:. It was so obvious that I was absolutely incredulous that it was never noticed by the TAs.
 
CityLights said:
Not to sound racist, but I've noticed the most cheating among international Chinese students in my science classes -- multiple times in my gen chem 1 class, when we were lined up to hand our tests in, I would notice students speaking in Chinese to each other and erasing answers on their bubble sheets :slap:. It was so obvious that I was absolutely incredulous that it was never noticed by the TAs.
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did it not occur to you that they may actually not be trading answers but praying in their native tongue to the dim sum Gods to come deliver old chinese woman with steam carts filled with delicious bite-sized morsels.

it's a stretch but one can imagine.
 
CityLights said:
Not to sound racist, but I've noticed the most cheating among international Chinese students in my science classes -- multiple times in my gen chem 1 class, when we were lined up to hand our tests in, I would notice students speaking in Chinese to each other and erasing answers on their bubble sheets :slap:. It was so obvious that I was absolutely incredulous that it was never noticed by the TAs.
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Haha, for my engineering classes, there always seems to be a suspicious group of Koreans in the back of a huge auditorium (200+ people) who just blatantly keep working on the test after time is called, all while talking to each other in Korean. It takes the TA's about 10 minutes to walk upstream against all the people leaving the exam to go tell them to put their pencils down.
 
integralx2 said:
Is this cheating as insane in my school as it is in yours. Its literally out of hand. I am just wondering is there hardcore cheating in medical school too ( I have feeling there probably is) ? :scared:
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I know of two types of cheating that are ~10%(total guess) prevalent at my school. There are two types that are both difficult to catch: people pre-typing information into their graphing calculators, and people abusing rx anti-add/adhd drugs. I doubt very much traditional cheating (ie writing on hand, hat, notes, etc) happens in medical school based on my professional school experience where they have committees to enforce academic integrity, and cameras in the classrooms. And if you are caught, at least at my school, it's 1 strike your out.
 
integralx2 said:
Is this cheating as insane in my school as it is in yours. Its literally out of hand. I am just wondering is there hardcore cheating in medical school too ( I have feeling there probably is) ? :scared:
Click to expand...

I haven't noticed it in medical school.
 
Has anyone actually gotten in trouble for having past exams? It doesn't really seem like cheating so much as wanting to know what the professor's test format is, though technically I guess its "academically dishonest".
 
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