Nearly 100 Would-Be MBAs Nailed in GMAT Scandal

The scores of 84 MBA seekers are canceled after they were found to have peeked at test questions. Some have already enrolled or graduated

By Louis Lavelle

The GMAT cheating scandal that has roiled the business school world for nearly three months, threatening to shatter the dreams of thousands, ended this week with more of a whimper than a bang. The exam administrator voided the scores of just 84 test takers and is allowing the vast majority of them to retake the exam immediately. At least some of the voided scores belong to students who have either already been accepted to business school or have graduated.

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which operates the GMAT test worldwide, said Tuesday that its investigation is over and that all test takers with canceled scores have been notified. GMAC has also notified more than 100 business schools that received the now-canceled scores—schools that are struggling to decide what to do about current students or graduates cast into admissions limbo by GMAC's decision. Some of the test takers had sent results to more than one school.

Few top business schools were spared. At No. 1-ranked University of Chicago, two students enrolled for fall admission were among those whose scores were canceled. GMAC's notification leaves the school just two weeks before the start of classes to figure out what to do. "We have professional standards and there has to be a discussion here if what happened was a violation of those standards," said Stacey Kole, deputy dean for Chicago's full-time MBA program.

Scoretop's Hard Drive Examined

The cheating scandal erupted in June, when GMAC announced that it shut down a test-prep Web site, Scoretop.com, that it had successfully sued for copyright infringement after discovering that it was posting "live" GMAT questions. Unlike the retired questions used by legitimate test-prep publications and services, the "live" questions on Scoretop were still in use on the GMAT exam. While the operator of the Scoretop site had already left the U.S. to return to his native China, thousands of Scoretop users were left worrying that their hopes of getting an MBA would be derailed by GMAC's probe.

GMAC officials said Sept. 9 that the organization has analyzed data on more than 6,000 subscribers contained in a Scoretop hard drive obtained after it shut down the site. GMAC correlated the information with its own testing records—including the actual exam questions answered by individual test takers—to identify individuals who used the site to break GMAC rules. (See the GMAC statement on probe results.)

In all it found 72 test-takers who had access to live questions on Scoretop, and another 12 who posted questions to the site from memory after taking the test. The 72 who accessed live questions will be permitted to retake the exam immediately; the 12 who posted questions will not be permitted to retake the exam for a minimum of three years. In all, GMAC canceled 569 score reports sent to business schools on behalf of the 84 individuals.

Students' Mixed Reaction

GMAC President David Wilson said the total number of test takers affected is far smaller than Scoretop's subscriber base because the trail of evidence needed to warrant score cancelation just wasn't available for the vast majority of users. GMAC meted out harsher punishment to those who posted live questions because, in GMAC's view, they committed the far more egregious offense: theft of intellectual property. "Posters are taking our material and for the first time, putting it on a public site," he said. "They were involved in stealing our material."