In a display of cheating unprecedented in the Educational Testing Services' nearly 50-year history, an unknown number of students in China, South Korea and Taiwan dramatically improved their scores on the verbal section of the Graduate Record Examination by sharing questions over the internet during the last academic year.
After taking the computer examination, which reuses questions and was administered six days per week, students logged onto several Chinese and Korean-language Web sites and posted memorized questions, ETS learned during a months-long investigation.
Responding to the debacle, ETS announced on Tuesday that it will temporarily suspend all electronic testing of the GRE in those countries in favor of a paper examination that will be offered only twice in the coming year, on Nov. 23 and March 15.
Though testing officials do not know how many of the approximately 55,000 students who take the GRE each year in these countries cheated, to produce what ETS Vice President of Graduate and Professional Education John Yopp called a "tremendous rise" in the average scores, the number would have to be substantial.
In China, the average test score skyrocketed 100 points -- on an exam scaled only from 200 to 800. In Korea, averages rose 50 points. Meanwhile, results from over 40 other countries surveyed showed no cause for suspicion.
"If there's no unfair advantage, the average stays the same," Yopp said.
The ETS elected to return to a paper test in China, South Korea and Taiwan because they were unable to create a new system that would guarantee electronic security.
"We couldn't find any solutions," Yopp said. The same computer examination will, however, remain in use in all other countries.
Information on the offending Web sites could still be accessed by students in the United States and any other country with no dearth of Chinese and Korean-language readers; as Yopp noted, "this is the World Wide Web, after all."
Yopp said that the ETS is concerned about that possibility, but will not seek to discontinue the electronic test in other countries without similar evidence of widespread cheating. Additionally, ETS hopes to find a way to return more secure computer tests to the affected countries by early next year.
ETS instigated its investigation on the recommendation of the GRE Board, in part because numerous graduate school deans had complained of a disparity between the high test results of some of their applicants and the students' actual levels of English-language proficiency.
"The schools don't believe the scores," Yopp said.
That reaction came at the expense of genuinely-qualified applicants; admissions officers could not differentiate between legitimately earned scores and instances of cheating. Yopp said ETS hopes the use of paper tests this year in those countries will "return credibility" to the applications of victimized students.
Each year more than 450,000 students worldwide take the GRE, making it the most commonly-used test for entrance into American graduate schools.
Dartmouth's Dean of Graduate Studies Carol Folt and Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies Gary Hutchins were on vacation and could not be contacted for this article.
