The Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC®) has announced the completion of its investigation of GMAT® test takers who paid to receive active test questions on the Web site Scoretop.com, in violation of GMAC testing policies and procedures.
McLean, Virginia (September 9, 2008)--The Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC®) has announced the completion of its investigation of GMAT® test takers who paid to receive active test questions on the Web site Scoretop.com, in violation of GMAC testing policies and procedures.
As a result of the investigation, GMAC has canceled the scores of a total of 84 test-takers. Twelve posted live GMAT questions on the Scoretop Web site and will not be eligible to take the test again for a minimum of three years. The remaining 72 wrote a message on Scoretop confirming that they saw items from the site on their GMAT exam. The scores of these individuals were also canceled; however, they are now allowed to re-test. Schools to which test scores of the students have been sent have also received notification of this action.
The Scoretop site was shut down in June, following the issuance of a default judgment against Lei Shi and other Scoretop operators by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for copyright infringement of GMAC intellectual property. The court awarded GMAC damages in the amount of $2.3 million, attorneys' fees, court costs, and other relief. GMAC also seized ownership of the Scoretop domain name and a computer hard drive as part of its efforts to collect on the judgment.
"We take the action of cancelling scores very seriously, with a full understanding of our ethical responsibility to both students and schools to protect the integrity of the test and the application process," says GMAC President David A. Wilson. He adds that decisions to cancel scores were based on an extensive analysis of data from the Scoretop Web site and GMAT registration and examination information. Wilson also notes that, while GMAC is not actively expanding the scope of the investigation, it reserves the right to investigate any additional information it receives about a test-taker's activities on Scoretop and to take appropriate action. More information is available in an FAQ at gmac.com: http://www.gmac.com/gmac/TheGMAT/Tools/FAQsScoretop.htm.
The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), owned and administered by GMAC, was designed for candidates for the MBA degree and is used as part of the admissions process by more than 4,000 graduate management education programs worldwide. The test uses a computer adaptive format that is generally considered one of the most secure available. Each candidate receives different questions based on his or her response to the previous question.
The Graduate Management Admission Council (http://www.gmac.com/) based in McLean, Virginia, is a non-profit education organization of leading graduate business schools worldwide dedicated to creating access to and disseminating information about graduate management education. For more information about GMAT, visit http://www.mba.com/.
SOURCE: Graduate Management Admission Council
CONTACT: Judy Phair of the Graduate Management Admission Council,
+1-703-245-0660, +1-202-903-3227 (mobile), jphair@gmac.com
Web Site: http://ww.gmac.com/
http://www.mba.com/