What are your thoughts on cheating on an exam?

Discover Your Odds of Getting into Medical School
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Agent B said:
Ok I just finally found your argument. So, you're saying the process is strictly a numbers game?
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No, but I'd say 95% of it is. You'd be surprised how many people I know who have thoroughly mediocre activities/experiences/essays but are in medical school simply because they met the minimum GPA/MCAT of the school and didn't blow the interview.
 
rifle4802 said:
No, but I'd say 95% of it is. You'd be surprised how many people I know who have thoroughly mediocre activities/experiences/essays but are in medical school simply because they met the minimum GPA/MCAT of the school and didn't blow the interview.
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I'm curious. What exactly are your target schools? Top 20? MDs?
 
rifle4802 said:
The higher your grades, the better your chances. I don't even have a 4.0 cumulative, but somewhere out there exists someone who does. So on the gpa front, this guy has the edge over me.

You should always strive to get the highest score possible. Your tolerance of mediocrity would be suitable for a different career goal, but in case you didn't know, medical school admissions is a competition whose contestants are all very smart, motivated and driven. A defeatist mindset like yours will not serve you well when it comes time for you to apply. I hope you won't complain if you don't get accepted.
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rifle4802 said:
Your reaction is strange. Even the low/mid tier schools have gpa averages around 3.65-3.75, which is better than an A average. If this wasn't impossible for most people to achieve, everyone could get into medical school. In reality, however, only ~50% of applicants (100% of whom are far more academically impressive than your average college graduate) get in. That's the reality.
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I was accepted to my school with a 3.55 ugrad GPA...

An application is more than just a GPA and MCAT, unfortunately for you.
 
dieanotherday said:
I almost want to take the effort to look up every pchem professor at every read 4 year university and mass email them with your first post and they will quickly figure out who you are

I got free time waiting for my own grad school to start. I hate cheaters like you. Be careful OP, too bad you can't delete this thread you'd be surprised how many people might take the effort. In fact why don't we split up the work sdners? Lets each pick a state and find all the pchem professors and tell them what a scumbag this guy is
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Yeah, go ahead and see if I care. What's done is done and my grade is set in stone. Like I said, the way you guys react to something as trivial as cheating on one test is comical. I don't know what world you live in if you think this stuff doesn't go on all the time at any level - high school, college, and yes... even medical school.
 
rifle4802 said:
Yeah, go ahead and see if I care. What's done is done and my grade is set in stone. Like I said, the way you guys react to something as trivial as cheating on one test is comical. I don't know what world you live in if you think this stuff doesn't go on all the time at any level - high school, college, and yes... even medical school.
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Is that a challenge?
Academy dishonesty is permanent as well.

No matter how high your gpa is med schools don't want a cheater like you.
 
Agent B said:
I'm curious. What exactly are your target schools? Top 20? MDs?
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I don't really care to be honest. I'll probably apply to 45+ schools and include top tier MDs, mid/low tier MDs, and mid/high tier DOs.

The more broadly I apply the better my chances are.
 
darkjedi said:
I was accepted to my school with a 3.55 ugrad GPA...

An application is more than just a GPA and MCAT, unfortunately for you.
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That's slightly lower than average but can easily be offset by a 30+ MCAT. Regardless, a 3.9+ is always going to be better than a 3.5+. As are always better than Bs. A 30+ will always be better than a 24.

The truth is that nothing is bad about having good numbers. With subpar numbers, however, it's an uphill battle you'd have to fight just to get in. Far easier to get in with above average stats.
 
The bigger crime is, why on earth is physics still a pre-med requirement
 
dieanotherday said:
Is that a challenge?
Academy dishonesty is permanent as well.

No matter how high your gpa is med schools don't want a cheater like you.
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I'll probably have 20+ interviews lined up by September/October next year. We'll see who it is medical schools want then.
 
Oh and btw OP it isn't a one shot deal, DO schools and other schools reward reinvention, whether it is through busting your butt in an SMP (MD or DO) or grade replacement (DO)
 
Saxappeal1 said:
Oh and btw OP it isn't a one shot deal, DO schools and other schools reward reinvention, whether it is through busting your butt in an SMP (MD or DO) or grade replacement (DO)
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Ok, whatever. Why should I, or you for that matter, want to waste time redoing classes you've already taken when you can just do it once and get it over and done with?
 
Because I care deeply about earning the grade that I deserve. Feels great to legitimately earn a B- in a class that over half of the class failed.
 
rifle4802 said:
I don't really care to be honest. I'll probably apply to 45+ schools and include top tier MDs, mid/low tier MDs, and mid/high tier DOs.

The more broadly I apply the better my chances are.
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But why is that necessary if you're going to have excellent GPA, excellent MCAT, and fantastic ECs, LORs, essays etc.? Isn't that a waste of money/time and inefficient?
 
Saxappeal1 said:
Because I care deeply about earning the grade that I deserve. Feels great to legitimately earn a B- in a class that over half of the class failed.
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Very touching, but adcom members will take an A over a B- every single day of the week.

An application loaded with B minuses is one that will be tossed into the rejection pile by pretty much every medical school besides some Caribbean ones. An application loaded with As will be considered.
 
My overall GPA is 3.5, I got 2 B-s, so no, that's not correct. And also, like it has been stressed to death, it isnt just about numbers.... but you won't believe it no matter how many premeds, med students, or adcoms tell you so... oh well
 
rifle4802 said:
Yeah, go ahead and see if I care. What's done is done and my grade is set in stone. Like I said, the way you guys react to something as trivial as cheating on one test is comical. I don't know what world you live in if you think this stuff doesn't go on all the time at any level - high school, college, and yes... even medical school.
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i'm going to bring back this comment that I posted in your other thread:

alright, so once again, you already had an opinion before you made the thread, you asked the question anyway, people gave their opinions, you said they're wrong and ignored it. Why ask?
 
And so what if I have to do an SMP or grade replacement if my GPA didn't happen to cut it? The extra hard work will prepare me for medical school. Grow some humility OP.
 
Agent B said:
But why is that necessary if you're going to have excellent GPA, excellent MCAT, and fantastic ECs, LORs, essays etc.? Isn't that a waste of money/time and inefficient?
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:laugh: The money isn't an issue at all and I'll hardly be wasting time. A common application is sent to all the schools. I can see where you're coming from if you meant writing all those secondaries is time-consuming. That may be true, but not all secondaries are significantly different from each other. Either way, I'm leaving no stone unturned. Better to apply to too many schools than to too few.
 
listener23 said:
Physics is still is a very 20th century'ish pre-req
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Gregor Wiesmann said:
Doesn't change the fact that Physics is a pointless pre-rec. They should drop Physics and Organic Chemistry and add Biochemistry and Anatomy+Physiology.
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Again. Let's not head there. We'll end it now.

rifle4802 said:
:laugh: The money isn't an issue at all and I'll hardly be wasting time. A common application is sent to all the schools. I can see where you're coming from if you meant writing all those secondaries is time-consuming. That may be true, but not all secondaries are significantly different from each other. Either way, I'm leaving no stone unturned. Better to apply to too many schools than to too few.
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Um.. ok. This endless money supply and burnout resistance are quite daring... which brings back to the original point. Were you stressed in taking the pchem exam?
 
Hmm my plan was to call every university I can off of the usnews ranking list of top undergrad universities during my lunch breaks and ask about fire alarms/drills that went off in the last 2 weeks if any

Then email all the physical chemistry professors from there on out. Your continued posts about entitlement in other threads will fuel my efforts.

I plan to be relentless and give it the old "premed" try.
 
dieanotherday said:
Hmm my plan was to call every university I can off of the usnews ranking list of top undergrad universities during my lunch breaks and ask about fire alarms/drills that went off in the last 2 weeks if any

Then email all the physical chemistry professors from there on out. Your continued posts about entitlement in other threads will fuel my efforts.

I plan to be relentless and give it the old "premed" try.
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I won't be surprised if someone who attends OP's school (and specifically his pchem class) is lurking this thread right now...
 
Hope your posting for a random IP brah. If SDN mods really wanted to , they could find your IP address and trace it back somewhere in the vicinity. I know there are some really good computer detectives on other websites who are computer savvy, shouldn't have cheated and shouldn't have made this thread man.

I don't know the legalities for SDN to actually be able to do that, however your stupid for even talking about it.

Also your just hurting yourself man, cheating is never the answer.
 
OP you know an awful lot about medical admissions. Where are you acceptance letters??? Listen, you cannot "fake" your way into medical school. Only pre-meds that haven't applied talk that nonsense. You cannot fake 5 excellent LORs, a 5/5 committee letter ranking, multiple publications, 3.7+ GPA, above average MCAT, years of community service, years of clinical experience. The list goes on. There is no way in hell you can "fake" your way into medical school. You have to have the numbers and experiences to get in.

That being said, you can cheat you way in like the OP said but the risks are so high that its not worth it. Medical school doesn't explicitly screen for cheaters etc. but the process makes it more difficult for these people to make it through.

As I said in my earlier post, there is a difference between playing the game (sucking up at office hours, looking at old exams in office hours or friends, getting a student solutions manual etc.) versus blatant academic dishonesty.

Finally, physics is a great prereq. @listener23, man you ain't been through the process what do you know about it? You'll be surprised how relevant it is to medicine. I have been shadowing cardiologists and doing research and the most important skills I have used are physics (simple fluid dynamics) and sound. Bro, I sit and listen to medical students get pimped on their rotations on the damn Bernoulli equations, V1A1=V2A2 (the principle that when the area the the fluid flows in gets smaller it has to speed up), doppler effect etc. You don't have to be Einstein but you need to understand these principles. When I was younger, I didn't think physics was relevant but it is.
 
So I created a situation like this - with a lot of opportunity to cheat - with the intention of catching cheated. I had 80% failure rate this year. I set up a hidden camera in a tissue box. I scanned the scantrons day one and let them finish on day two. I saw who went back and changed answers. I let them peer grade their test, expect I already graded them ahead of time. You should've been in my class :3 would've been fun!
 
moisne said:
So I created a situation like this - with a lot of opportunity to cheat - with the intention of catching cheated. I had 80% failure rate this year. I set up a hidden camera in a tissue box. I scanned the scantrons day one and let them finish on day two. I saw who went back and changed answers. I let them peer grade their test, expect I already graded them ahead of time. You should've been in my class :3 would've been fun!
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That's kind of messed up. "Entrapment" I think they call that. Seems like you should be more concerned about why you can't get information across to more than 20% of your students than about catching people cheating. I've been in school for almost 25 years now, and I can say that every single teacher I've ever had who got excited about having a high failure rate was a terrible teacher. You are there to impart information. Of course you can write a test that's impossible to pass. You just get your rocks off showing how much smarter you are than your students or what?
 
ERPCT said:
That's kind of messed up. "Entrapment" I think they call that. Seems like you should be more concerned about why you can't get information across to more than 20% of your students than about catching people cheating. I've been in school for almost 25 years now, and I can say that every single teacher I've ever had who got excited about having a high failure rate was a terrible teacher. You are there to impart information. Of course you can write a test that's impossible to pass. You just get your rocks off showing how much smarter you are than your students or what?
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No, I just don't think students should cheat. Period.
 
moisne said:
So I created a situation like this - with a lot of opportunity to cheat - with the intention of catching cheated. I had 80% failure rate this year. I set up a hidden camera in a tissue box. I scanned the scantrons day one and let them finish on day two. I saw who went back and changed answers. I let them peer grade their test, expect I already graded them ahead of time. You should've been in my class :3 would've been fun!
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As in, 80% cheated? Or 80% failed the exam even after cheating?
 
If they turned the test back into you
And then when they got it back the next time and their answers changed how is that cheating?

people have good memories and whatever they didn't understand the first time they made a mental note and studied more

You let them have that opportunity to study in between an ongoing test that spanned 2 days to take

Doesn't sound like cheating to me
Deliberately stealing a test when it was supposed to be collected is cheating.
 
WhippleWhileWeWork said:
As in, 80% cheated? Or 80% failed the exam even after cheating?
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80% cheated. I told them explicitly they may NOT go back and change their answers. I also told them that during peer grading (as a time to show them how to do the problems as well) to grade honestly. I even said "if I were you, i would not want to cheat on this test".

I usually always implant one method to prevent cheating. One example is having two different version of test and the answer choices are flipped around.

I am referring to OP, he would have a much harder time pulling off cheating.

I once wrote a recommendation for a student and found out a month later he was expelled for cheating and plagiarizing
 
moisne said:
80% cheated. I told them explicitly they may NOT go back and change their answers. I also told them that during peer grading (as a time to show them how to do the problems as well) to grade honestly. I even said "if I were you, i would not want to cheat on this test".

I usually always implant one method to prevent cheating. One example is having two different version of test and the answer choices are flipped around.

I am referring to OP, he would have a much harder time pulling off cheating.

I once wrote a recommendation for a student and found out a month later he was expelled for cheating and plagiarizing
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That sounds questionable as well.
When you run a scantron through the machine it auto grades it and puts the grade in pink / red with numbers right and percentages. It's not avoidable. How did you run them through the machine without the score being printed on the test and if it was pre scored like you said the students would see what their pre day 1 of test grade was regardless and they wouldn't be able to change their previous answers.

Your scenario sounds sketchy.
 
moisne said:
80% cheated. I told them explicitly they may NOT go back and change their answers. I also told them that during peer grading (as a time to show them how to do the problems as well) to grade honestly. I even said "if I were you, i would not want to cheat on this test".

I usually always implant one method to prevent cheating. One example is having two different version of test and the answer choices are flipped around.

I am referring to OP, he would have a much harder time pulling off cheating.

I once wrote a recommendation for a student and found out a month later he was expelled for cheating and plagiarizing
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Did you turn them all in to the Dean for discipline?
 
dieanotherday said:
That sounds questionable as well.
When you run a scantron through the machine it auto grades it and puts the grade in pink / red with numbers right and percentages. It's not avoidable. How did you run them through the machine without the score being printed on the test and if it was pre scored like you said the students would see what their pre day 1 of test grade was regardless and they wouldn't be able to change their previous answers.

Your scenario sounds sketchy.
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I think he perhaps normal-scanned their Scantrons? As in copied?
I dunno.

Regardless, it's mistrust (and the fact that it was founded) like this which makes me so incredibly grateful to have gone to a school where cheating was neither a concern nor a problem.
Not having any multiple choice exams helps...it's harder to cheat on actual content-containing answers than a letter or two.
 
mehc012 said:
I think he perhaps normal-scanned their Scantrons? As in copied?
I dunno.

Regardless, it's mistrust (and the fact that it was founded) like this which makes me so incredibly grateful to have gone to a school where cheating was neither a concern nor a problem.
Not having any multiple choice exams helps...it's harder to cheat on actual content-containing answers than a letter or two.
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This class sounds made up.
This situation doesn't make sense.
It's like the town where they have one barber
And every man must be shaved by the barber
So how does the barber get shaved?
Classic computer science logic this town doesn't exist just like your exam and the class you taught.
 
dieanotherday said:
This class sounds made up.
This situation doesn't make sense.
It's like the town where they have one barber
And every man must be shaved by the barber
So how does the barber get shaved?
Classic computer science logic this town doesn't exist just like your exam and the class you taught.
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I never taught a class, nor did I claim to. My only input was that I went to a college where the profs trusted us and did not worry over cheating (take-home closed note finals, yo).
Also, your example is wholly irrelevant and does not add any clarity at all.
Your post should end at 'this class sounds made up', only, that would just make it a repeat of your prior one.

Regardless of whether that particular poster is a prof, those situations do exist (profs taking measures to reveal cheating) and are relevant to the discussion.
Perhaps we could just springboard from it rather than trying to seem smart by nitpicking every tiny detail to play 'reveal the person exaggerating on the internet'?
At the end of the day, the take-home message is: OP is lucky that his prof doesn't take sneaky anti-cheating measures, cuz he would go from feeling like he gamed the system to having the situation turned on him.
 
mehc012 said:
I never taught a class, nor did I claim to. My only input was that I went to a college where the profs trusted us and did not worry over cheating (take-home closed note finals, yo).
Also, your example is wholly irrelevant and does not add any clarity at all.
Your post should end at 'this class sounds made up', only, that would just make it a repeat of your prior one.

Regardless of whether that particular poster is a prof, those situations do exist (profs taking measures to reveal cheating) and are relevant to the discussion.
Perhaps we could just springboard from it rather than trying to seem smart by nitpicking every tiny detail to play 'reveal the person exaggerating on the internet'?
At the end of the day, the take-home message is: OP is lucky that his prof doesn't take sneaky anti-cheating measures, cuz he would go from feeling like he gamed the system to having the situation turned on him.
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I think previous poster made up exam scenario to scare OP.
Because it just doesn't make sense. Now obviously there are students with low character and little integrity but 80% of a class cheating?
That means the teacher wasn't explaining the rules of the exam very well. If it was an upper division bio class where every premed is required to take I highly doubt 80% of the classroom would throw away a chance at any grad school cause they are that grade hungry.
 
dieanotherday said:
I think previous poster made up exam scenario to scare OP.
Because it just doesn't make sense. Now obviously there are students with low character and little integrity but 80% of a class cheating?
That means the teacher wasn't explaining the rules of the exam very well. If it was an upper division bio class where every premed is required to take I highly doubt 80% of the classroom would throw away a chance at any grad school cause they are that grade hungry.
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I know that's what you think.
What I think is that the specifics of that poster's situation are, frankly, irrelevant.
The gist - that there are profs who let students think they get away with cheating in order to catch them - was relevant.
Of course, now we're just caught up in the irrelevant tangent where you point out how smart you are by catching people in their internet exaggerations. Yippee, what fun.
 
mehc012 said:
I know that's what you think.
What I think is that the specifics of that poster's situation are, frankly, irrelevant.
The gist - that there are profs who let students think they get away with cheating in order to catch them - was relevant.
Of course, now we're just caught up in the irrelevant tangent where you point out how smart you are by catching people in their internet exaggerations. Yippee, what fun.
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Or the irrelevant tangent where you give us your opinion on what is or is not relevant?
Yippeeeeeeee
 
Back on track for me, did Dog person turn in the students or not?
I need closure.
 
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