GMAT Scandal Has MBA Students Sweating

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"Unfair Advantage?"

Another poster, "Neha," wrote, "I can say that there were absolutely no so-called live questions." She added: "But overreaction [by GMAC] will kill the careers of a lot of innocent students."

Some students who never used Scoretop say the attention given to the site has caused them to be wary of all test-preparation sites. "It certainly does make me leery of going out there and seeking other alternatives," said Jacob Blasdel, a recent graduate of DePaul University who is currently studying for the GMAT. "Especially with what's come out, I feel pretty limited to only using test prep material approved by GMAC."

Another group of GMAT takers, however, has loudly condemned Scoretop users. Some students who say they didn't use Scoretop allege that the site's users received an unfair advantage for spots at prestigious schools. "It makes me so mad," said Tanya Aidrus, an MBA student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. "There are tons of people who are qualified, and deserve to be here, who were going through the process in a legitimate way and didn't get a spot because of those who were cheating."

Stressing Out

Students who discussed the incident in recent days were uniform on one thing—applying to business school is a high-stakes process that can result in attempts to beat the test. "People are so focused on this one score that there's immense pressure. I'm not overly shocked that someone would cheat," said Adam Stout, a student at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. "Especially when they've been groomed by their parents for 20 years to go to a top B-school."

"When you're applying to schools, one of the only things you can control is the GMAT," said MIT student Aidrus. "You can't change much else, which makes you, in many ways, almost desperate to do really well."

On the subject of punishment, students differentiated between those who knowingly cheated and others who trusted Scoretop's disclaimers that the material was original. Students who didn't know they were cheating should be allowed another shot at the test, Stout said. "It's hard to tell the difference between 'retired by,' and 'similar to,'" referring to terms for legitimate variations of test questions.

At any rate, students whose names are on the Scoretop hard drive are now likely to be parsing GMAC's pronouncements in coming weeks as closely as they might have studied sample test questions, hoping they still have an MBA in their future. "GMAC," pleaded one commenter on BusinessWeek.com, "have empathy and please don't ruin careers."

Join a debate about whether certain Scoretop.com users cheated.

Associate Editor Louis Lavelle contributed to this story

Levy is a BusinessWeek reporting intern. Lawyue is a BusinessWeek reporting intern.