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More Updates on Scoretop.com GMAT Controversy

27 Jun 2008

by Admissions.com staff

 

Further details are beginning to emerge about the GMAT controversy involving Scoretop.com publishing unauthorized test questions. A press release from the GMAC provides the following insights:

  • GMAC is suing the operators of the United States-based Scoretop website for damages in the neighborhood of $2.3 million.
  • The charge is for the distribution of copyrighted GMAT materials that were released to paying members without the permission of GMAT.
  • GMAC has seized assets controlled by Scoretop, including a hard drive that may contain data on users who paid for the premium service.
  • GMAC is committed to reporting any honor violations to schools who may have received GMAT scores from students who had advance information through illicit means.

In addition, there has been some chatter on well-known business school websites such as gmatclub.com and Business Week’s B-School message board about the severity of the issue, and how this data could have been used.

 

The alleged scheme typically involved students taking a live GMAT, and then reporting actual live questions to the Scoretop website (both directly and on message boards). It is said that these live questions were then compiled and distributed among paying users who could reference the questions in their preparation for the test.

 

If these allegations are true, what are the implications?

 

The GMAT (administered by the GMAC) uses a computer-adaptive test known as a CAT, which enables participants to take the test entirely online in a manner that scales questions based on the accuracy of answers submitted previously. In practice, this means that there is a pool of thousands of possible questions that a test-taker could potentially get, and the questions that each participant sees is based on the pools (ex. “difficult”, “moderate”, “easy”) that the adaptive test is selecting for the participant. However, GMAC typically re-uses some of these questions in a given month.

 

So if a user were to know a portion of the questions, they could prepare their answers ahead of time, getting an unfair competitive advantage over other test-takers. And this is what is being alleged in the case in hand.

 

GMAC is claiming that Scoretop published some of these live questions (reported by actual test-takers) and users paid for access to the question bank. Thus in theory some users could be taking a live GMAT with questions they have already seen before. Since the CATs are scaled based on how other users scored relative to each other, it is possible that the entire scaling percentiles could have been compromised.

 

More on this story as details come in. Have a tip on using Scoretop, or have feedback on how this might play out? Sound off in the message boards, or drop us a line at admissions.editor@monster.com!

 

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