| AI Finance and Economics Agency Liu Xiaoran
Editor| Yang Shufang
The Thai movie "Genius Gunner" has recently become a hit, and the tension presented by several post-90s actors has made many viewers marvel.
But in reality, "Genius Gunner" has a prototype, based on the sat real cheat that happened in October 2014. At that time, this incident delayed the release of the results of Chinese candidates, and even almost dragged down the cancellation of all Chinese candidates' results on the same day.
<h1>A Chinese girl who was arrested in a Thai exam room</h1>
After the SAT on October 11, 2014, a Bangkok examiner sent an email to ETS (American Educational Testing Center) saying that a Chinese girl who cheated had been arrested.
"This Saturday, we provided exam services to a total of 130 students. 10 of the 130 students from China not only sat in the same row, but also had consecutive admission numbers. Apparently, these students' exams were all registered by the same person, who was likely to be an employee from a training institution in China. Inclusions in the training provider's package may also include visa applications, air tickets, and advance access to exam answers via mobile phone. I'm sure these people must have made a lot of money from it. Not only in Thailand, but in other countries in the same time zone, they may also do the same. ”
They caught one of the cheating girls on the spot.
She hid her iPhone in her coat pocket. When we collected the student's mobile phone before the exam, she lied that she had left the phone in the custody of her mother in the morning, but she secretly checked the mobile phone during the exam and punctured her lie - she was caught by the invigilator.
When I checked her phone, I found that it was full of "correct" answers to the day's questions, all from a 'friend' of her name, Blue Ocean. According to the candidate's confession, the so-called friend was a teacher at her training institution in China. Later, the candidates also told us that all the answers came from the same exam that was held in Australia earlier in the day. ”
What was described in the email was the "jet lag cheat" presented by "Genius Gunner". Bangkok examiners called it "organized crime" and believed that the training institution was behind it. On that day, when the cheating girl was caught, she was far from imagining the consequences of her actions.
<h1>Affecting innocent students, training institutions cannot be blamed</h1>
On October 29, 2014, a notice issued by ETS said that due to suspicions of institutional leaks and student cheating in the October 11 test, ETS will investigate the relevant incidents, and the Results for Asia may be delayed by three or four weeks, and the effective results are expected to be released by mid-November.
Among them, the suspension of the release of results is based on the candidate's country of residence, not the test location.
A day later, the email was published in the Washington Post. ETS did not state that there was a direct cause and effect between the result delay and "time zone cheating", but the correlation between the two incidents was clear.
The ETS spokesperson's statement that "the suspension of the release of results is based on the candidate's country of residence" undoubtedly includes China. The extension affected 14,000 to 16,000 Chinese students, including Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Beijing (test centers within international schools), Hong Kong (test centers in international schools), Singapore, Thailand, etc., with a wide range of impacts, which is the first time in the history of the SAT test.
The news caused an uproar in China's study abroad circles. It should be noted that the application deadline for early admission in many colleges and universities is November, which will undoubtedly delay the application process of countless Chinese candidates. For a time, parents, students, and study abroad institutions panicked, and some people even worried that the results would be canceled. In this way, those candidates who did not cheat became innocent scapegoats.
But if you know something about some Chinese training institutions, it's not hard to understand how ETS handles it.
When interviewed by the media, some insiders revealed that small training institutions in Jiangsu and Zhejiang will use the guise of "stealing questions" when persuading students to apply for classes. The way to "steal questions" is to install personnel to read the questions in the examination room of the first exam, and use the time difference to leak the real questions to the candidates.
Fortunately, ETS did not renege on its word, and at about 23:00 on November 21, the aftermath finally waited for the results to be announced. The candidates involved were routinely cancelled, but they still had the opportunity to take the exam in the future.
<h1>EtS is nerve-wracking for cheating</h1>
The punishment was severe, but some people did not stop there. On May 30, 2015, a Chinese website in the United States reported that a Chinese student flew from Texas to southern California to take the TOEFL test, taking advantage of the 2-hour time difference at the beginning of the test to find a way to pass the questions and answers to the test takers in California.
ETS, which has been repeatedly tricked, had to make a cruel move. At present, the writing part of the SAT has four essay questions, corresponding to the four regions of the Eastern United States, the Western United States, the European Examination Area, and the Asia-Pacific Region. But even in two different regions, the repetition rate is still high.
At the same time, ETS has repeatedly detected other cheating tricks of Chinese test takers: substitute exams, small copies...
To this end, ETS had to stop the big move. Covert visits, plainclothes inspections, sending people to pretend to be candidates to monitor the exam; collecting candidates' personal information and handwriting samples; taking photos of the candidates and attaching them to the transcripts sent to the units where the results are used; only recognizing the second-generation ID cards; comparing photos and comparing the timbres of the two speaking tests... They will even "hunt down" the cheating candidate's university, forcing them to accept punishment or withdraw from school.
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