Students Are Finding New Ways to Cheat on the SAT(www.nytimes.com)
8 pointsby JumpCrisscross7 hours ago4 comments
  • denimnerd423 hours ago
    If the test is taken on personal laptops it's almost impossible to stop cheating. You can easily take video capture and send it out via 5g modem on a completely separate computer hidden inside of the laptop. Then you can receive answers back in very discreet ways like nearly imperceptible LEDs.

    Same reason DRM-data rights management or DLP-data loss protection technologies are rather pointless against determined attackers. Anything that is permitted to be viewed can be copied.

  • apparent7 hours ago
    > A variety of coding and SAT “prep” websites discuss ways to bypass Bluebook security. One way is to use a plug-in that seems like a mouse, but is, in fact, a video capture device. Another is a program called a “sandbox, an isolated virtual environment that can work without detection within a computer.

    I assume that "plug-in" means peripheral? Seems very difficult to catch all of these people, since a proctor won't be able to inspect the device and tell whether it is a regular mouse or something trickier.

    Virtual machines seem like a game of cat and mouse, and one which the SAT is likely to lose.

  • leothetechguy3 hours ago
    Not from America, but can I ask... Is the SAT that difficult?
    • OkayPhysicist3 hours ago
      The SAT, by design, covers the entire difficulty range. Parts are easy, parts are hard, such that about half of students get less than half of it right, and 0.1% of students ace it. It's not merely pass-fail, they're trying to give a pretty granular rank to each student.

      Thus, if the test is worth taking for a student (because they want to go to college), it's probably worth cheating on. Students outside the top 0.1% can appear better than their peers to improve their odds of getting into better universities, and students in the top 0.1% tend to be there due to intense extrinsic pressure, which may drive them to cheat to increase their certainty of acing it.

      For a competent student, it's not hard to get an acceptable grade. For every student, it's difficult to achieve an exceptional grade.