I remember reading Colin Powell's autobiography (many years ago). He wrote about how he was selected for a very elite training program meant to groom military

I remember reading Colin Powell's autobiography (many years ago). He wrote about how he was selected for a very elite training program meant to groom military upper management. When his cohort arrived, they told the room (I'm paraphrasing here) that the selectivity for this program was so intense, and that so many talented people were rejected, that if the plane carrying them crashed and everyone on it died, they could completely replace his cohort from the "reject" pile with absolutely no loss of quality. Perhaps smart kids find themselves competing for this kind of thing more often than others? A 99%ile LSAT score actually does increase your chances of getting into Yale law school over a 97%ile LSAT. A 3.95 GPA in the sciences really does increase your changes of getting into UCSF med school over a 3.7. It gets even worse when students are aware that their peers are cheating. I remember reading about a cyclist who admitted to doping and regretted it deeply. His discussion of why and how he came to cheat was interesting - he said that he could have accepted losing as a non-doper if he'd believed that the people besting him were competing honestly, but that when he realized they were going to win because they cheated and he didn't, he cracked and started doing it too. And of course, once he's doing it, then even more people realize they'll lose if they aren't doping. Eventually, it becomes endemic. Sure, that sounds like a rationalization, but it also provides a very clear illustration of how a large population can essentially corrupt and cheating can become widespread. My guess is that cheating is less common in environments where the measured outcome of learning has little bearing on your opportunities afterwards. In other words, in environments where you need to meet a standard of competence to graduate, but people aren't especially interested in what your grades were, my guess would be that cheating is far less common.