In the high-stakes environment of AP classes, many students believe exam scores make or break their chances of getting into their dream colleges. To reach their lofty goals, some students will do anything to gain a slight edge against their peers such as the girl who tried to use her service dog to cheat during her AP Chemistry exam.
Disguised as a compassionate companion, the dog wore a rain jacket filled with notes that the girl secretly glanced at during the exam. This suspicious behavior was swiftly noticed by a nearby proctor who discovered the hidden notes and promptly escorted the girl out of the exam room. Many now speculate that she was most certainly given a zero for the exam and, being a senior, had her offer rescinded from the college she planned to attend.
Every year, proctors try their best to prevent cheating by underscoring the considerable consequences if caught. Despite this, numerous students have used a popular method of unauthorized assistance by creating programs inside their calculators to house important formulas and concepts that they discreetly utilize during the exams. Though retrieving notes during the exam is expressly forbidden by the College Board and told so by proctors, as per College Board policy, students aren’t required to clear the memory on their calculators. This led to many students opting to take notes in their calculators and relying on them throughout the exam. Even videos that are meant to prepare those for the exams included ideas of using a calculator in this way for the exam.
“It’s incredibly disheartening to learn about students exploiting calculator programs, as it undermines the countless hours of hard work and dedicated studying that I invested to achieve a good score through honest means,” junior Vishnu Suresh said. “This tomfoolery truly destroys the honesty and integrity of genuine academic achievements.”
Despite College Board’s seemingly lax security when it comes to calculator notes, they have implemented some effective strategies to prevent cheating through the different time zones in America. To prevent East Coast test takers from providing test information to West Coast exam takers, who reside in later time zones, the East Coast AP exams are designed to end at the same time as when the West Coast AP exams begin. Though this strategy may seem invulnerable at first glance, it is rendered futile as exam questions are being leaked on social media platforms, most prominently TikTok.
“As for leaking and cheating, it’s almost expected. It did annoy me because it’s definitely going to mess up the AP curve but it’s on the College Board to deal with it,” junior Suha Tasfia said.
Ultimately, AP exams are not very important in the grand scheme of college admissions in spite of many students feeling obligated to achieve all 5s on their AP exams. If a student gets a low score or even fails an AP exam, they have the option to not to submit their scores to colleges they apply to. This ensures that AP exams are only able to benefit their test takers. It is better to do unfavorably on the AP exams than to resort to dishonest cheating, a sentiment shared by many teachers in the school.
“Cheating on any kind of standardized test leads to overconfidence and a false sense of achievement in the students,” AP chemistry teacher Mrs. Bansal said. “They don’t realize that the lack of skill sets, and content will put them in unfavorable conditions during undergraduate and graduate courses. In addition, they start to undermine the importance of integrity which is a core value of a civilized society.”
