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Oh that wasn't specific to your post, just general musing.
Lying on VMCAS
- Thread starter JoAnna423
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Yeah, if it's between trusted friends, sure. But I don't know if you read my earlier comments that the girl who asked for my personal statement is a cheater, and she's making up hours because her father-in-law is a vet, and he's getting req letters from his friends to say that she worked for them when she didn't. She's not the most trustworthy person.
She's completely making up experience for the VMCAS
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Again, not specific to ya. Just musing because a bunch of people were commenting on it. I've probably sent mine to a dozen complete strangers on SDN, and read dozens of strangers' while I was preparing it. I appreciated their trust. Definitely think you're 100% correct to not send to someone who has demonstrated a lack of integrity.
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No worries, I knew what you meant. Did you go to NC State, by any chance? I have a friend there who's graduating this year.
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Yup, c/o 2016. If they went to state for undergrad too I probably know them, otherwise it's iffy.
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No, she's from Miami. Anyway, I've gone to visit her and I love Raleigh. Everyone there is so nice compared to Miami. I really liked NC State vet school too, but I didn't apply to it.
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I personally would love to watch this person try to take an anatomy practical. I bet the meltdown would be glorious.
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I don't know I guess I just want to believe most people are honest...at least the ones that are friends
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I don't believe the vet stepfather is going to be able to recruit any of his friends to this idea. He might ask them, but I'd put money on them not being comfortable putting their professional reputation on the line.
Of course I don't know them, but I still would take that bet.
Of course I don't know them, but I still would take that bet.
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Cheating doesn't stop once you're in vet school, that's for sure. I've seen it already and it hasn't even been a full semester yet.
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Better to be rejected for what you are, than accepted for what you're not.
Vet schools are getting more and more stringent with their testing and evaluations, especially after the huge cheating fiasco at Ohio over the summer. Even if this person is admitted, they may not make it through. Cheaters tend to cheat habitually. Eventually they get caught. And even if they don't? Cheat on the test, you don't learn the material. Don't learn the material, you become a bad vet. These things have a way of catching up.
Vet schools are getting more and more stringent with their testing and evaluations, especially after the huge cheating fiasco at Ohio over the summer. Even if this person is admitted, they may not make it through. Cheaters tend to cheat habitually. Eventually they get caught. And even if they don't? Cheat on the test, you don't learn the material. Don't learn the material, you become a bad vet. These things have a way of catching up.
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I hope not, PrincessButterCup, but it's Miami....everyone here is always doing shady stuff like this lol. People are also willing to bend the rules if you're from the same place as they are. Honestly, I've seen so much crazy illegal stuff here so I wouldn't be surprised.
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Yeah, that's how I feel. I rather get C's in vet school than graduate with A's but not know anything and look like a complete ***** who obviously didn't read during vet school.
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Well..for starters, choosing professors based on testing style is absolutely not cheating in my opinion. One could argue that publishing tests to those 'Rate this Course' websites is unethical, but I've known professors to publish their materials themselves to those websites for various reasons. I've actually had a professor direct us to those published exams to use as review materials. I've had other profs say "Just don't sell this exam, because it's not yours to make a profit off of." I won't get into whether or not reusing the same test questions for the past 10 years is 'good' or not, because that's another discussion on its own, but that's on the professors, not the students. It could vary greatly from school to school, but I don't think you should label someone as a cheater just because you think they're being selective about who their professors are/how the courses are taught. There's more to all of it than you may think. Of course, it could also be as plain as "She's buying old exams off of people who weren't supposed to take their copy home in the first place" or something..but unless you know that's the case, careful with the 'cheater' label (this is separate from her fabricating experience, though).
Professors aren't idiots. They know damn well that their exams are circulating, and still use the same questions. Again, whether or not that's 'okay' is another discussion. Is it unfair to the students who choose not to use those materials? Maybe, but I know a professor who would call you an idiot for not using what has been made available to you. Not all professors think that way, but some intentionally do not prevent this stuff from happening.
This is just an aside, but you probably sound naive to others too. We all had to start somewhere. Cheater or not, we were all naive at some point, and still are in certain ways. You'll probably sound naive to some extent in your own interviews.
VMCAS doesn't do much to verify authenticity of applications, for future reference. They just verify that your transcripts match your course entry section. They're basically a middleman in the application process.
Just one last thing...you'd be surprised what BS people say when they're trying to intimidate someone. For all you know, she didn't make up one single thing on her application.
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Yep, and it is infuriating.
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If you guys are firsthand witnesses to cheating, yes, I think you should be reporting it. There are ways to do these sort of things anonymously, and at least at my school, they've emphasized that it's just as much our job as it is the school's to be a part of preventing this crap.
They may not confront the student right away, but you can bet that there will be eyes on the student during exams for the next four years. If people are serial cheating, they'll get themselves caught.
I'm glad I haven't witnessed any cheating myself, but I'm sure it happens. It happened in the class above mine, for sure. Electronic exams make cheating harder in some ways, but much easier in other ways.
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Well, in my case, it has been reported. we all got emails about it and there's someone that walks around the room we take tests in rather than sitting at the front now. we take quizzes in class a lot a that's where the majority of cheating was happening, whether people were pulling up notes on their laptops when the browser wasn't locked or talking amongst each other during quizzes thinking they couldn't be heard.
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Our exam software shuts down everything, even our antivirus software, so luckily we couldn't cheat that way here...but some brilliant person realized that she could just leave the exam room as if she was done, and go hide in some obscure corner of the school and finish the exam with her notes in front of her (You have to be on school wifi for exams). Now they check to see our "Submission Successful" screens before letting us leave the exam room.
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OMG! I got this sick feeling in my stomach when I read this. WHY?
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Was that person expelled?
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That is just insane...
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I'm not going to say I have no idea why someone would feel the need to cheat. There's an f-ton of pressure on all of us. That never makes it okay, of course, but some people just crack, I guess. Or I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt and they're actually serial cheaters.
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There is no anonymous way to report cheating at my school. It's rather unfortunate.
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You couldn't make up some random yahoo email and contact the appropriate people that way? I mean half of the problem with cheating is that people see it and don't report it, you'd think the school would take measures to make witnessed feel comfortable coming forward.
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Well..for starters, choosing professors based on testing style is absolutely not cheating in my opinion. One could argue that publishing tests to those 'Rate this Course' websites is unethical, but I've known professors to publish their materials themselves to those websites for various reasons. I've actually had a professor direct us to those published exams to use as review materials. I've had other profs say "Just don't sell this exam, because it's not yours to make a profit off of." I won't get into whether or not reusing the same test questions for the past 10 years is 'good' or not, because that's another discussion on its own, but that's on the professors, not the students. It could vary greatly from school to school, but I don't think you should label someone as a cheater just because you think they're being selective about who their professors are/how the courses are taught. There's more to all of it than you may think. Of course, it could also be as plain as "She's buying old exams off of people who weren't supposed to take their copy home in the first place" or something..but unless you know that's the case, careful with the 'cheater' label (this is separate from her fabricating experience, though).
Professors aren't idiots. They know damn well that their exams are circulating, and still use the same questions. Again, whether or not that's 'okay' is another discussion. Is it unfair to the students who choose not to use those materials? Maybe, but I know a professor who would call you an idiot for not using what has been made available to you. Not all professors think that way, but some intentionally do not prevent this stuff from happening.
This is just an aside, but you probably sound naive to others too. We all had to start somewhere. Cheater or not, we were all naive at some point, and still are in certain ways. You'll probably sound naive to some extent in your own interviews.
VMCAS doesn't do much to verify authenticity of applications, for future reference. They just verify that your transcripts match your course entry section. They're basically a middleman in the application process.
Just one last thing...you'd be surprised what BS people say when they're trying to intimidate someone. For all you know, she didn't make up one single thing on her application.
Something I will add on to this though is that most schools consider use of a test bank to be in violation of their academic integrity codes because test banks made by book publishers are explicitly only supposed to be distributed to professors, regardless of whether students can still buy them online from sketchy websites. Someone indicating that they only want to take classes where test banks are used raises a lot of red flags for me personally, though to your point there's no way of knowing 100% if that student is actually accessing test banks and using them for their classes.
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If someone wants a prof who uses a test bank, chances are it's because previous classes were allowed to keep the paper copies of their exams, not because they're somehow accessing a test bank. Wouldn't that involve some sort of computer hacking? How else would a student access a professor's question bank?
Also, FWIW, I interpreted a test bank as the pile of questions a professor(s) has written and has been pulling from for the last 10 years of teaching a course...meaning it's their intellectual property. Again, I know profs who intentionally publish their material (and they can, because that's their own written exam). Some do it because they want higher class averages, some do it because they know it's a good way to review, etc.
Edit: Just a side complaint about question banks, lol...I always hate when a prof interrupts the exam to say "Hey everyone, when I wrote this question, I forgot to include the right answer in the choices and I keep forgetting to fix it every year, so ignore that" or something similar
I get PhDs have things to do, but I always came across as a huge lack of effort on their part to reuse questions for years and years.Granted, that was just my experience at my undergrad.
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You know, I'm not sure to be honest. I know that if you want to report something anonymously, in person, they tell you that not only can it not be anonymous but you will have to go and essentially plead your case in front of the ethics board (honour court? Whatever it's called) and if they find the case to be invalid then YOU will receive punishment including and up to expulsion. I would imagine that if something came from an anonymous email address it would be ignored.
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Wow that's crazy...almost like they're more concerned with people trying to screw others over than anyone actually cheating
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There's a ton of pressure and a lot on the line. It's human nature - if you are too scared you'll fail and you can think of a way to cheat and your moral standards are jusssssst low enough, and you think the odds of getting caught are lower than the odds of failing .... then there is a high probability you will cheat. *shrug*
I dunno if most cheaters are serial cheaters, either. But I would guess they are - if you're in the position of doing it once you'll probably be in the same position again.
The nice thing is, I dunno how you could cheat on NAVLE. I mean, I'm sure somebody could come up with some awesome method worthy of a heist movie, but .... realistically it's probably a pretty tough test to cheat on in any meaningful way. Might cheat your way through vet school, but you'll still have to face NAVLE.
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Wow, that's harsh. My school doesn't allow anonymous reporting either, but they don't punish the reporters for trying to do the right thing. ISU requires a written complaint, and then the Honor Board confronts the accused student about it. It almost never has to go to a hearing because most of the reports are about minor incidents that won't result in expulsion, just lesser penalties, so students plead guilty and then never do it again (or never get caught again).
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I'm talking more specifically about text banks written by textbook companies and provided to professors, which can be purchased online through various sketchy websites. People can and have gotten in trouble for using them in the past, including a notable example at University of Central Florida a few years ago.If someone wants a prof who uses his test bank, chances are it's because previous classes were allowed to keep the paper copies of their exams, not because they're somehow accessing a test bank. Wouldn't that involve some sort of computer hacking? How else would a student access a professor's question bank?
Also, FWIW, I interpreted a test bank as the pile of questions a professor(s) has written and has been pulling from for the last 10 years of teaching a course...meaning it's their intellectual property. Again, I know profs who intentionally publish their material (and they can, because that's their own written exam). Some do it because they want higher class averages, some do it because they know it's a good way to review, etc.
Edit: Just a side complaint about question banks, lol...I always hate when a prof interrupts the exam to say "Hey everyone, when I wrote this question, I forgot to include the right answer in the choices and I keep forgetting to fix it every year, so ignore that" or something similar
Granted, that was just my experience at my undergrad.
As for keeping paper copies of exams, that's something that depends a lot on the professors (obviously), and the ones who do that often rewrite their exams every year anyway so having paper exams becomes a bit of a moot point. Sometimes professors just don't mind much and use the same exams each year even though people could keep their exams. How much having old exams would "help" a student really depends on how the professor tests.
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random story time: I witnessed a girl cheat on the ACT in high school. I didn't really think much of it because 1: They warned us beforehand that everyone's questions are in different orders, if not completely different to begin with, so I thought she was an idiot 2: Meh. She ended up getting like a 26 (which not to be judgmental, but she probably wouldn't have gotten that score on her own) and I was a little miffed because she must have just had the right exam and copied off of the right person for that to happen. Talk about odds. However the NAVLE is at a legitimate testing center and everything, you'd probably need to put forth a lot of effort like you said.
But yeah...when people say "Psht, how could someone ever cheat? I can never understand." I think that's being a little high and mighty (no offense to anyone here). Again, it doesn't make cheating okay and it shouldn't happen, but I'd be surprised to hear someone look me in the eye and tell me they've never once felt desperate/really low in an academic situation, even if they went on to not cheat.
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It's not the cheating that surprises me. I know people do it all the time, but the lengths/risks people go to in order to cheat.
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Well..for starters, choosing professors based on testing style is absolutely not cheating in my opinion. One could argue that publishing tests to those 'Rate this Course' websites is unethical, but I've known professors to publish their materials themselves to those websites for various reasons. I've actually had a professor direct us to those published exams to use as review materials. I've had other profs say "Just don't sell this exam, because it's not yours to make a profit off of." I won't get into whether or not reusing the same test questions for the past 10 years is 'good' or not, because that's another discussion on its own, but that's on the professors, not the students. It could vary greatly from school to school, but I don't think you should label someone as a cheater just because you think they're being selective about who their professors are/how the courses are taught. There's more to all of it than you may think. Of course, it could also be as plain as "She's buying old exams off of people who weren't supposed to take their copy home in the first place" or something..but unless you know that's the case, careful with the 'cheater' label (this is separate from her fabricating experience, though).
Professors aren't idiots. They know damn well that their exams are circulating, and still use the same questions. Again, whether or not that's 'okay' is another discussion. Is it unfair to the students who choose not to use those materials? Maybe, but I know a professor who would call you an idiot for not using what has been made available to you. Not all professors think that way, but some intentionally do not prevent this stuff from happening.
This is just an aside, but you probably sound naive to others too. We all had to start somewhere. Cheater or not, we were all naive at some point, and still are in certain ways. You'll probably sound naive to some extent in your own interviews.
VMCAS doesn't do much to verify authenticity of applications, for future reference. They just verify that your transcripts match your course entry section. They're basically a middleman in the application process.
Just one last thing...you'd be surprised what BS people say when they're trying to intimidate someone. For all you know, she didn't make up one single thing on her application.
Why would she lie about lying? Why you tell someone you are trying to cheat the system in order to intimidate them? She said she doesn't have time to volunteer so that vet will just make up hours. She sounded naive because she had a very poor grasp on what the veterinary field entails, which she would know more about if she spent a lot of hours volunteering/working.
Also, did I write something that offended you? Or are you trying to play the devil's advocate? I'm sure you sound naive to others as well.
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I was actually thinking about that when I was taking it this week. I left my phone in the car because, why would I need my phone, right? Well, apparently I could have actually kept my phone in the locker and used it during breaks (in which I was able to walk down the hall and around the corner to a bathroom) as long as I promised I wouldn't access any study materials. I don't think any amount of cheating done via that method would really help in a significant way on NAVLE, but I guess it's possible.
Yeah, it's pretty harsh. The school also requires that the accuser goes before the honour court, or whatever it is, along with the accused and they both have to listen to each other's stories.
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Why does anyone lie? I could definitely see someone that has to work two full-time jobs, plus go to school, plus is trying to shadow different kinds of vets and keep up with their home life being intimidated by someone that is just going to lie on their application to look just as hard-working as them. Or, it could be insecurity. People do weird things.
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I definitely said we're all naive in my post, so no need to feel defensive. I am playing the devil's advocate.
People in a frustrating situation tend to forget to look at the bigger picture. I'm definitely guilty of that. I myself have been accused of cheating on exams when I certainly wasn't, which is why I urged you to think about what you're saying (again, that's separate from her telling you she's making up her experience hours). To claim someone is cheating academically because of the professors they pick, and making a subsequent assumption off of that, is a big deal and gets people hurt in the long run. Unless you have proof, you don't know anything. You just don't. Even her running her mouth isn't proof, but it can certainly land her in hot water. You have no concrete proof that this girl isn't feeding you a load of crap so you start doubting yourself. A lot of pre-professional students seem to get their rocks off by subtly (or not so subtly) one upping each other.
People do silly, stupid things when they're threatened, worried, etc. Like I said, she could be faking her hours, or she could be full of **** about faking. Seriously. I know a girl who once who said she spent months working with a vet in the zoo field (we happened to be talking about how we both want to be zoo vets). I got a chance to work with him a year or so later, brought up how we both knew her, and he had no idea who I was talking about. Showed him a picture and everything. Super awkward, but yeah, she made it up for whatever her reason was. Or the people who love to name drop a popular professor/clinician as if they're best buds, but in reality, they sat in their class for a semester like everyone else.
You can choose to spend your time dwelling, or you can move on and be the best you can be. Besides, if she's claiming that all these vets will back up her fake hours, you won't be able to disprove her claims anyways, unfortunately. I know you came here mostly to get your anger justified (and looking at your side alone, it can be), but there is almost always more to the story than you think and it just isn't worth the stress and time to solve the mystery.
Edit: Quantity of hours doesn't necessarily reflect on someone's grasp of the field, by the way.
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Yeah. Reviewing material on breaks would be pretty easy to do - but so what? You've got limited break time. If you want to spend it cramming a few things into your head .... meh. Technically, no doubt it's cheating. But is it really going to take a fail and turn it into a pass? I doubt it. All it's going to do is cut into your brain's 'refresh' time and probably worsen your actual performance.
Don't you think?
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I've heard people say stuff like that (not necessarily within the context of vet/professional school admissions, just in general). Some people do honestly love to brag about this and that, having "connections" that will get them privileges academically/professionally/socially/legally, whatever. The kinds of things I've overheard people bring up as if it were something to brag about are mind-boggling...people are weird.
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Yes, that's definitely me.
Why?
I do NOT want a DVM treating my precious pets if they do not understand "what" they're doing (or not supposed to be doing) as a DVM.
Ditto for MDs.
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Yeah, I've personally never had a professor who didn't write a new exam ever year. I've had a few who rotated through a massive list of questions each year, but they wrote all of those questions themselves and rotated them out frequently enough that it would probably be difficult to be really "helped" (in terms of seeing identical questions) by getting old exams.
