TESTING: The May SAT test was cancelled nationwide in South Korea, leaving more than a thousand students who hope to attend American colleges scrambling.
By Isabel De La Garza, Senior Writer
For the first time in the history of the SAT, College Board has cancelled an SAT date in an entire country. It was dropped under allegations of widespread cheating. College Board and the Educational Testing Service, which develop the exams, decided to make the “difficult, but necessary” choice after discovering official test questions circulating in test-prep centers. According to both agencies, “tutoring companies in the Republic of Korea are alleged to have illegally obtained SAT and SAT Subject Test materials for their own commercial benefit.”
According to CNN, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office of Korea raided several testing centers and, according to the Journal, barred at least 10 staff members of test centers from leaving the country while it investigated. Test center managers have stated that the problem is widespread and official test booklets can be found and purchased for about $4,575, which many families feel is a small cost compared to losing admittance to prestigious private American schools. According to the most recent report by the Institute of International Education, 72,295 students traveled to study in the U.S. from 2011-2012, making Korea the third largest provider of foreign students to the U.S.
Worldwide, this number has been on the rise at 764,495 total foreign students in the U.S. last year. Cheating, however, is not a new phenomenon on the SAT either, even in South Korea. In 2007, about 900 South Korean students taking the exam had their results canceled after it was found that an unknown amount of them had seen all or parts of the exam before they took it. These, along with a string of other similar instances of cheating, has lead South Koreans to question whether their students are unusual in their tendency to cheat on exams. However, they are not alone. In the U.S., there have been many instances of students taking the test for others in exchange for money. Many students are barred from the test for questionable identification, and thousands of tests are canceled each year for suspected cheating.
The College Board and ETS feel unsure whether they will hold the June SAT test in South Korea; students are currently flying to Hong Kong and Japan in order to take their tests on time. Nonetheless, the cheating scandals bring to mind many questions. Are the colleges’ emphases on high SAT scores too unrealistic for students to actually care about learning the information? Is there a growing integrity problem in this generation? Maybe it is something else entirely, but nonetheless it is disconcerting.