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About 5 years ago MIT's graduate management Sloan School had a "cheating" incident where potential students could see if they were admitted before they were off
by danielweber 14y ago
About 5 years ago MIT's graduate management Sloan School had a "cheating" incident where potential students could see if they were admitted before they were officially told by trivially modifying the URL of their web account. It was widely discussed on mailing lists with detailed instructions.
When the school found out, it delayed admittance for those students that did so by a year, saying some crap like "in this new post-ENRON age we need to teach that ethics matter." But the only ethics they taught was "don't make the guy in charge look silly."
(I tend to fall on the "don't hack into things" side of arguments here, but the ease of the "hack" as well as the incredibly minor impact it had on anyone of importance just made this all seem way overblown. EDIT Plus, it was MIT. Can't you take a joke?)
- kd0amg 14y agoI haven't thought this through at all, but what is problematic about students finding out their admission results before whatever magical date? At first glance, it doesn't seem like the students are worse off (they have more time to plan/act based on their admission result and are free to not look at the information if they don't want it), nor does it seem like the school is better off (I can't think of a good way for them to take advantage of students' uncertainty right now).
- danielweber 14y agoThere's not a thing wrong with it. But it got the school's attention and so they had to Do Something.
- Evbn 14y agoIt's a sad decline from the era where the President of MIT celebrated student hacks.