5 ms·
This is a great step for accessibility, but will not go well with Collegeboard's level of incompetence. I took the GRE (administered by the same company that ow
by ro_bit 3y ago
This is a great step for accessibility, but will not go well with Collegeboard's level of incompetence. I took the GRE (administered by the same company that owns collegeboard) remotely online and as soon as I started the test their absolute spyware of a lockdown browser immediately closed. Despite me passing the system check immediately before the test, the lockdown browser thought I was cheating and immediately shut off the test without recourse. After waiting 2 weeks, they came back saying they would not refund me and despite some back and forth, the rep I was interacting with seemed convinced I was cheating and would not give me any further details on how to prevent the issue in the future or any way to further appeal my case or get a refund.
I retook the test a couple months later inperson at a testing center (where they used computers with the same lockdown browser) and got 99th percentile scores on everything, and I would recommend anyone planning to take the SAT to still take it at a testing center.
- ssdspoimdsjvv 3y agoI enjoyed reading your comment up until the last sentence where you mentioned your scores, which is completely irrelevant.
- jimbokun 3y agoThink it was just making the point he or she didn’t have any reason to cheat.
- MengerSponge 3y agoI'd be less surprised by a 99th percentiler cheating than a 90th percentiler. I know plenty of smart kids who enjoy gaming systems after all.
- kyleamazza 3y agoYour comment comes off as "people who score well on tests are more often cheaters", supported by anecdotal evidence. Above all, it's hardly relevant to the overall discussion and feels more like a grievance.
- blitzar 3y agoA score of 14/100 on a test is unlikely to have cheated.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoA score of 14/100 on a test is likely to have cheated incompetently, e.g. by using the answer key from some other test.
- turkishmonky 3y agoI read it that smart people are more likely to try and figure out to outsmart a security system not to cheat but just to see if they can. In my experience at libraries and on college networks, that tracks.
- MengerSponge 3y agoReading comprehension is still undefeated. A student who has excess bandwidth after acing a test is more likely to want to poke and explore the limitations of that system than a student who, at capacity, is almost perfect. Unscientific, but I'd bet there are two major cheating populations: 95%+, and something like 50-75%. By definition there are a lot more of the mid-tier-barely-getting-by cheaters, but they also aren't as smart and are only dangerous to societal trust in aggregate. Come to think of it, I missed the third major population: pre-meds
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoYes this whole comment seems just like an excuse to brag
- nomel 3y agoI see it as a great example of the total failure of a system, where a top performer doesn't even have hope.
- ro_bit 3y agoI don't think anyone in their right mind brags about GRE scores, and I'm sorry it came off that way. I mentioned it solely because as other comments said, I have no reason to cheat.
- ofslidingfeet 3y agoIt could be relevant if the system itself is treating outlier performance as evidence of cheating.
- sjburt 3y agoIt's a suspicious claim as well, a perfect score on GRE math is only 94th percentile.
- nindalf 3y agoHow is this possible? Do you mean that the top 6% all get perfect scores and all get assigned 94th percentile, rather than 100th? Anyway, this isn’t true in my experience. 167/170 in math got me 94th percentile. Far from a perfect score.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoYes the top 6% all got perfect scores. This happened to me on one of the optional SAT math exams, I was ironically confused for a bit.
- Tempest1981 3y agoTest needs to be harder
- pfannkuchen 3y agoMaybe, maybe not. For this sort of test there is a huge selection bias since only people planning to work in math or an adjacent field bother to take the test. If you gave the same test to the general population this wouldn’t happen. I’m guessing most selective schools treat it as sort of a pass/fail, and I’m not sure whether that’s problematic for them or not.
- zerocrates 3y agoIt's definitely my recollection from the GRE (though this was many years ago now that I took it): for math a perfect score got you a percentile in the mid-to-high-90s, while on the opposite side you could lose several points and still be 99th percentile in verbal.
- ro_bit 3y agoYou're right. I misremembered. I went back to check the reports. I ended up with a perfect score in math (which is only 96th according to the score report and 1 point off on the reading section, which was 99th. I only brought up the scores to indicate that I didn't need to cheat. I don't think GRE scores are a valid metric of competency or anything worth bragging about. I'm sorry it was taken in another way
- gnicholas 3y ago> I would recommend anyone planning to take the SAT to still take it at a testing center. It is only offered at testing centers.
- ro_bit 3y agoAh, I misread the article. I completely missed the line mentioning that the test was still inperson, and thought that the "bring your own device" thing implied remote testing. I'm glad it's still an in-person proctored exam, since then if people have issues with their own devices they can hopefully switch to a provided one
- al_borland 3y agoIf anything has to be installed, I’d say it would still be wise to use a provided device. I didn’t notice anything about it in the article, though the mention of a tablet option makes me assume it’s web based.
- throwaway2037 3y agoIf you are based in the US, try to make a claim with your credit card or, if more adventurous, small claims court to sue. It seems pretty easy to win. Also, send a letter to your attorneys general office to explain what happened. > got 99th percentile scores on everything This part was unnecessary to include. Nothing but humblebragging there.
- jjallen 3y agoI disagree. It shows that the original test taker was less likely to be cheating than a lower scoring person and the system was at more likely to be at fault.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoNot really, since if you don’t trust their account of the story in the first place (that they didn’t cheat), why would you trust that part? It adds nothing. You should immunize yourself to devices like this having any impact for the same reason you should immunize yourself to cheap devices like “I normally hate X but” and “as an X, I think that” in other online comments.
- Mordisquitos 3y agoI don't understand the '99th percentile' aside as a way to convince HN readers that the commenter wasn't cheating. Rather, I take it as an expression of personal pride (in the positive sense) that there was such incontrovertible evidence that the commenter had no need to cheat in the first place, told with the satisfying (but probably unrealised) hope that the people who unjustifiably accused the commenter of cheating were later aware of the top marks he or she achieved after taking the exam in person.
- Tempest1981 3y agoMore humble but still making the point: "I scored well on the test"
- 3y ago
- versatileG65 3y ago[dead]
- glazzies 3y ago[dead]