TJ - which middle schools had students accepted in 2017

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While penalties on cheating students may be instituted, it should not be the primary focus of this discussion. I am more concerned about teachers, who don't care to level the field for their students or actually learn about their students' progress and grade accordingly. If test questions are recycled by the teacher, he/she gets no feedback on whether his students learnt anything at all or simply copied someone's solution from the previous year. If test questions change, but only a portion of the class has access to old exams, that portion of the class has an advantage on the actual test, rendering any grading in that course as well as recommendation letters devoid of reality. But grades and recommendation letters ultimately do matter for the kids' future, who are we kidding? If you are a teacher, don't recycle old test questions in your new tests but do make the old questions available to every student in the class! Why are we trying to hold the kids to a higher standard than adults? It's the teacher's job to evaluate his/her students in a manner that reflects their real knowledge and skills, not their level of honesty or ability to get their hands on the old tests. If this is happening, it's because the teacher is not doing his job!

I had this happen in a grad class (there were ten Ph.D. students in it), that I took years ago. Three students (German, Italian and (white) American) got access to an old exam from a more senior student, while a professor in that course decided to use the exact same exam questions again. The three got A's, the rest landed on a curve. There is simply no way to outperform a student, who comes with readily available answers, on an exam with real time pressure, no matter how smart you are. That's because, even if you are the smartest person in the room, you still need time to think (provided the test questions are not completely trivial).

An excellent Chinese student in that class got an F (since his score was way below the cheaters' score, and the curve adjusts for the mean score), was put on probation, had to repeat the course. He ultimately graduated, but don't tell me that experience was somehow useful for him. He wasted two-three years of his graduate life on that nonsense. Of the three cheaters, two are now professors, navigating their careers quite successfully, I might dd: kissing editors' ass...s, stroking egos of important people in the field... you know, "networking." The chinese guy is also a professor (at a slightly less prestigeous school). Honesty is an individual characteristic, not racial. But my point is that grading should not be about honesty or following rules, it should be about finding a way to correctly evaluate students, and it's a direct responsibility of teachers to do that. And, if you think that you will not cheat when stakes are high and everyone around you is cheating, look at the Wells Fargo scandal, which did not involve kids but adults. (I am not Asian, in case you are wondering.)

As parents, expect better from your kids. Teach them cheating is wrong, don't make excuses for them by blaming the teacher or other students.


Sidebar question: If your kid broke the honor code by cheating, what did you say to him/her? Did you justify the behavior or hold them accountable for his/her actions? How did that go over? Did your DC listen or make excuses?

[Anonymous]

We need to teach kids that studying from old exams without express permission from the teacher if the course is cheating. If the teacher hands out old exam copies to study from, that's fine. If one is getting old exam questions from another student or from someone who has "files" of old exam questions, it is cheating.

The above is the definition I and many of the parents I have spoken with grew up with and it is not that difficult to understand. We can't tell our kids that it is up to the teachers to keep them from cheating; our kids need to be developing their own inner compasses to determine right from wrong. Blaming teachers for kids cheating confuses kids and makes cheating an issue that is murkier than it needs to be.

I think part of the problem is that some kids don't realize that asking friends about questions on a test or studying old tests from sources other than their teacher is cheating. I'm not sure why they don't know this at their age, but it needs to be made clear and then backed up by consequences.

It will hurt all the kids at TJ if the school gets a reputation as a place where kids cheat to get high GPAs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We need to teach kids that studying from old exams without express permission from the teacher if the course is cheating. If the teacher hands out old exam copies to study from, that's fine. If one is getting old exam questions from another student or from someone who has "files" of old exam questions, it is cheating.

The above is the definition I and many of the parents I have spoken with grew up with and it is not that difficult to understand. We can't tell our kids that it is up to the teachers to keep them from cheating; our kids need to be developing their own inner compasses to determine right from wrong. Blaming teachers for kids cheating confuses kids and makes cheating an issue that is murkier than it needs to be.

I think part of the problem is that some kids don't realize that asking friends about questions on a test or studying old tests from sources other than their teacher is cheating. I'm not sure why they don't know this at their age, but it needs to be made clear and then backed up by consequences.

It will hurt all the kids at TJ if the school gets a reputation as a place where kids cheat to get high GPAs.

Are you one of the lazy TJ teachers by any chance?

You "grew up" with a particular norm (and maybe others did as well) but that doesn't make it the universal norm. How do the old test papers get outside of TJ and into the hands of the selling companies? Are the teachers and the school aware of this? If so, what have they done to fix it? Repeating on every thread that it's not the teachers job and trying to define cheating to suit your mental model takes us nowhere.

What are TJ and the teachers doing about it? Tell me that and I will support it. I can't (nor you) can convince all parents to come up with a single plan. The school should. If they don't they suffer the consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to teach kids that studying from old exams without express permission from the teacher if the course is cheating. If the teacher hands out old exam copies to study from, that's fine. If one is getting old exam questions from another student or from someone who has "files" of old exam questions, it is cheating.

The above is the definition I and many of the parents I have spoken with grew up with and it is not that difficult to understand. We can't tell our kids that it is up to the teachers to keep them from cheating; our kids need to be developing their own inner compasses to determine right from wrong. Blaming teachers for kids cheating confuses kids and makes cheating an issue that is murkier than it needs to be.

I think part of the problem is that some kids don't realize that asking friends about questions on a test or studying old tests from sources other than their teacher is cheating. I'm not sure why they don't know this at their age, but it needs to be made clear and then backed up by consequences.

It will hurt all the kids at TJ if the school gets a reputation as a place where kids cheat to get high GPAs.

Are you one of the lazy TJ teachers by any chance?

You "grew up" with a particular norm (and maybe others did as well) but that doesn't make it the universal norm. How do the old test papers get outside of TJ and into the hands of the selling companies? Are the teachers and the school aware of this? If so, what have they done to fix it? Repeating on every thread that it's not the teachers job and trying to define cheating to suit your mental model takes us nowhere.

What are TJ and the teachers doing about it? Tell me that and I will support it. I can't (nor you) can convince all parents to come up with a single plan. The school should. If they don't they suffer the consequences.

Why are you justifying students cheating? "Because it is there..." is not a valid excuse.

[Anonymous]

There are some situations, where students are exposed to old tests, which do not constitute cheating. A child is asked by a friend to help him solve some problems (the friend has the old test questions), without the child's knowledge about where the questions come from. A sibling took the class earlier (perhaps before a given child even entered high school) and the younger child remembers a family discussion of a particular topic or interesting exam question.... It's impossible to police all the possible ways, in which information is disseminated. And, yes, it is a lot easier to penalize kids than the adults in charge of evaluation. So let us focus on that...

[Anonymous]

Well, I think we see why TJ has cheating problems. Because the parents who are supposed to teach right from wrong justify it but blaming teachers.

And BTW-- every kid at TJ knows sharing test questions with friends between classes is cheating. The school is very clear on that. And you can say teachers should make new tests. But if a teacher has 6 sections of Math 3, they can't and shouldn't be expected to come up with 6 different tests each year for each chapter-- and make them all equally hard to be completely fair. A huge part of the cheating is 1st period kids sharing questions with 2nd-7th period.

[Anonymous]

A couple thoughts on all of this....

What I consider TJ prepping is specifically reviewing previous tests beyond the one provided on their website - seeking out these tests at a prep center and working on scrambled paragraphs over and over again. I have no problem with people taking creating writing classes or math enrichment, but these centers that have popped up where kids are repetitively taking tests for years - that's where people have an issue with prepping. Parents who are doing this to their kids: yes, your kid may get in but think about what you lost over the years of doing this, but I can assure you it comes with a cost.

The sports analogy doesn't work - it would be the equivalent of someone only working on 3 hail mary plays in football over and over again until they can do those 3 plays. But great football players don't do that - they run, they do push ups, they lift weights, etc. So you're not getting the best football player. With TJ, we don't know if we're getting the kids with the best STEM potential - in some cases they have just been trained to pass the test with extreme help preparing. Not all kids who are admitted are doing this, but I think given the increase in the number of prep centers in the area and the age at which they are starting, there is a market for these services. The admissions office cannot pretend they don't exist and up till this point has been unable to stay one step ahead of the prep centers.

If looking at old tests is considered cheating when you're at TJ, should it not be considered cheating during the admissions process? Unauthorized access to grades is considered cheating yet the admissions office was unable to prevent some students from getting their scores before others. The admissions office was able to correct the mistake but there was no effort made to catch those who were responsible for this or took advantage of this glitch. I'd rather see a question about cheating and ethics on the SIS than any other type of question.

If people are cheating their way through high school, when does it end? I don't want a doctor who cheated his or her way through medical school! TJ/FCPS currently does not have the political will to expel all the cheaters, but they need to start somewhere.

I know two teachers at TJ who are extremely frustrated by the cheating and stressful environment there. One teacher (not in the language department) said that native Chinese speakers are taking Chinese for the easy A, thereby making it difficult for the students who really want to learn Chinese.

Asian groups in NoVa have tightknit communities - now that many of their students are getting in, it creates more pressure for the rest to get in and go - and yes, there are some families that will go to extreme measures to make this happen.

To the Asian mom who thinks we are all judging her and her student, I can tell you that I am not judging any individuals. I can't speak for everyone, I agree that there are harmful stereotypes. But the sheer number of Asians being accepted - even if just a fraction of these are extreme preppers and then cheaters, that is a lot of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to teach kids that studying from old exams without express permission from the teacher if the course is cheating. If the teacher hands out old exam copies to study from, that's fine. If one is getting old exam questions from another student or from someone who has "files" of old exam questions, it is cheating.

The above is the definition I and many of the parents I have spoken with grew up with and it is not that difficult to understand. We can't tell our kids that it is up to the teachers to keep them from cheating; our kids need to be developing their own inner compasses to determine right from wrong. Blaming teachers for kids cheating confuses kids and makes cheating an issue that is murkier than it needs to be.

I think part of the problem is that some kids don't realize that asking friends about questions on a test or studying old tests from sources other than their teacher is cheating. I'm not sure why they don't know this at their age, but it needs to be made clear and then backed up by consequences.

It will hurt all the kids at TJ if the school gets a reputation as a place where kids cheat to get high GPAs.

Are you one of the lazy TJ teachers by any chance?

You "grew up" with a particular norm (and maybe others did as well) but that doesn't make it the universal norm. How do the old test papers get outside of TJ and into the hands of the selling companies? Are the teachers and the school aware of this? If so, what have they done to fix it? Repeating on every thread that it's not the teachers job and trying to define cheating to suit your mental model takes us nowhere.

What are TJ and the teachers doing about it? Tell me that and I will support it. I can't (nor you) can convince all parents to come up with a single plan. The school should. If they don't they suffer the consequences.

Why are you justifying students cheating? "Because it is there..." is not a valid excuse.

I did not mean to come off as mean... I think I've seen your posts on other threads and responded likewise... No, I do not justify cheating. I believe that the school and teachers are in the best position to enforce anti-cheating measures. I also don't believe that reviewing old tests is not teaching. It is ONLY IF the teacher specifically says not to (Actually, I'd question why he/she is not changing the tests if that's such a concern). If my DC cheats and I find out, there would be hell to pay. However, if that is going to affect their future, I can't have that either.

It's like drugs. If my DC does drugs, I'll be pissed off and try to fix it. If someone wants to through him in jail, I will fight tooth and nail to stop that because it's only a downward spiral from there. I think parents of most cheaters are in a similar situation. They don't want their kids to cheat but if they do and are caught, they don't want them removed either. The school and teachers have to lead the charge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, I think we see why TJ has cheating problems. Because the parents who are supposed to teach right from wrong justify it but blaming teachers.

And BTW-- every kid at TJ knows sharing test questions with friends between classes is cheating. The school is very clear on that. And you can say teachers should make new tests. But if a teacher has 6 sections of Math 3, they can't and shouldn't be expected to come up with 6 different tests each year for each chapter-- and make them all equally hard to be completely fair. A huge part of the cheating is 1st period kids sharing questions with 2nd-7th period.

If a teacher has 6 sections of Math 3, he/she most certainly can and should be expected to come up with 6 different tests. There is nothing difficult about that (I am saying this as a mathematician).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to teach kids that studying from old exams without express permission from the teacher if the course is cheating. If the teacher hands out old exam copies to study from, that's fine. If one is getting old exam questions from another student or from someone who has "files" of old exam questions, it is cheating.

The above is the definition I and many of the parents I have spoken with grew up with and it is not that difficult to understand. We can't tell our kids that it is up to the teachers to keep them from cheating; our kids need to be developing their own inner compasses to determine right from wrong. Blaming teachers for kids cheating confuses kids and makes cheating an issue that is murkier than it needs to be.

I think part of the problem is that some kids don't realize that asking friends about questions on a test or studying old tests from sources other than their teacher is cheating. I'm not sure why they don't know this at their age, but it needs to be made clear and then backed up by consequences.

It will hurt all the kids at TJ if the school gets a reputation as a place where kids cheat to get high GPAs.

Are you one of the lazy TJ teachers by any chance?

You "grew up" with a particular norm (and maybe others did as well) but that doesn't make it the universal norm. How do the old test papers get outside of TJ and into the hands of the selling companies? Are the teachers and the school aware of this? If so, what have they done to fix it? Repeating on every thread that it's not the teachers job and trying to define cheating to suit your mental model takes us nowhere.

What are TJ and the teachers doing about it? Tell me that and I will support it. I can't (nor you) can convince all parents to come up with a single plan. The school should. If they don't they suffer the consequences.

Why are you justifying students cheating? "Because it is there..." is not a valid excuse.

I did not mean to come off as mean... I think I've seen your posts on other threads and responded likewise... No, I do not justify cheating. I believe that the school and teachers are in the best position to enforce anti-cheating measures. I also don't believe that reviewing old tests is not teaching. It is ONLY IF the teacher specifically says not to (Actually, I'd question why he/she is not changing the tests if that's such a concern). If my DC cheats and I find out, there would be hell to pay. However, if that is going to affect their future, I can't have that either.

It's like drugs. If my DC does drugs, I'll be pissed off and try to fix it. If someone wants to through him in jail, I will fight tooth and nail to stop that because it's only a downward spiral from there. I think parents of most cheaters are in a similar situation. They don't want their kids to cheat but if they do and are caught, they don't want them removed either. The school and teachers have to lead the charge.

If your kid cheats at TJ I want him gone. End of story. If my kid cheats at TJ, she is gone. We have zero tolerance for that. None

Then again, I wouldn't consider our base school as a "jail" that would start a "downward spiral". WTF? Do you really think that that the 98% of FCPS kids who don't attend TJ are in jails on a downward spiral?

That is some screwed up logic, and a screwed up ethical standard. If only 10% of Asian parents at TJ are saying "yes, it's bad, but...", they give the other 90% a bad name. In fact, any parent of any race who does this give ALL TJ families a bad name.

Cheating should not be a slap on the wrist crime. In my college, you were expelled for your first honor code violation. Someone in my law school class cheated on a test, it was reported to the state bar, and she was not allowed to sit for the bar her first year out of law school.

TJ should expel every kid who cheats. That will solve the problem quickly. Attending TJ is a privilege, not a right. Kids should recognize they were given a wonderful opportunity, and make the most of by really trying to learn.

Teachers can write 6 tests to try to keep kids from cheating. But as long as there are no consequences, some kids will still find a way.

And again-- base school is a prision? I bet they love you at neighborhood gatherings. What a snob. Kids go to Ivy's from our base school too.

[Anonymous]

If a teacher has 6 sections of Math 3, he/she most certainly can and should be expected to come up with 6 different tests. There is nothing difficult about that (I am saying this as a mathematician).

Expected to? Not. A teacher needs to be able to compare apples to apples when determining how well their students did on a test. If each section took a different test, teachers would not be able to collect this data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to teach kids that studying from old exams without express permission from the teacher if the course is cheating. If the teacher hands out old exam copies to study from, that's fine. If one is getting old exam questions from another student or from someone who has "files" of old exam questions, it is cheating.

The above is the definition I and many of the parents I have spoken with grew up with and it is not that difficult to understand. We can't tell our kids that it is up to the teachers to keep them from cheating; our kids need to be developing their own inner compasses to determine right from wrong. Blaming teachers for kids cheating confuses kids and makes cheating an issue that is murkier than it needs to be.

I think part of the problem is that some kids don't realize that asking friends about questions on a test or studying old tests from sources other than their teacher is cheating. I'm not sure why they don't know this at their age, but it needs to be made clear and then backed up by consequences.

It will hurt all the kids at TJ if the school gets a reputation as a place where kids cheat to get high GPAs.

Are you one of the lazy TJ teachers by any chance?

You "grew up" with a particular norm (and maybe others did as well) but that doesn't make it the universal norm. How do the old test papers get outside of TJ and into the hands of the selling companies? Are the teachers and the school aware of this? If so, what have they done to fix it? Repeating on every thread that it's not the teachers job and trying to define cheating to suit your mental model takes us nowhere.

What are TJ and the teachers doing about it? Tell me that and I will support it. I can't (nor you) can convince all parents to come up with a single plan. The school should. If they don't they suffer the consequences.

Why are you justifying students cheating? "Because it is there..." is not a valid excuse.

I did not mean to come off as mean... I think I've seen your posts on other threads and responded likewise... No, I do not justify cheating. I believe that the school and teachers are in the best position to enforce anti-cheating measures. I also don't believe that reviewing old tests is not teaching. It is ONLY IF the teacher specifically says not to (Actually, I'd question why he/she is not changing the tests if that's such a concern). If my DC cheats and I find out, there would be hell to pay. However, if that is going to affect their future, I can't have that either.

It's like drugs. If my DC does drugs, I'll be pissed off and try to fix it. If someone wants to through him in jail, I will fight tooth and nail to stop that because it's only a downward spiral from there. I think parents of most cheaters are in a similar situation. They don't want their kids to cheat but if they do and are caught, they don't want them removed either. The school and teachers have to lead the charge.

If your kid cheats at TJ I want him gone. End of story. If my kid cheats at TJ, she is gone. We have zero tolerance for that. None

Then again, I wouldn't consider our base school as a "jail" that would start a "downward spiral". WTF? Do you really think that that the 98% of FCPS kids who don't attend TJ are in jails on a downward spiral?

That is some screwed up logic, and a screwed up ethical standard. If only 10% of Asian parents at TJ are saying "yes, it's bad, but...", they give the other 90% a bad name. In fact, any parent of any race who does this give ALL TJ families a bad name.

Cheating should not be a slap on the wrist crime. In my college, you were expelled for your first honor code violation. Someone in my law school class cheated on a test, it was reported to the state bar, and she was not allowed to sit for the bar her first year out of law school.

TJ should expel every kid who cheats. That will solve the problem quickly. Attending TJ is a privilege, not a right. Kids should recognize they were given a wonderful opportunity, and make the most of by really trying to learn.

Teachers can write 6 tests to try to keep kids from cheating. But as long as there are no consequences, some kids will still find a way.

And again-- base school is a prision? I bet they love you at neighborhood gatherings. What a snob. Kids go to Ivy's from our base school too.

TJ would not do that because TJ wants to look good on test scores and on paper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

If a teacher has 6 sections of Math 3, he/she most certainly can and should be expected to come up with 6 different tests. There is nothing difficult about that (I am saying this as a mathematician).

Expected to? Not. A teacher needs to be able to compare apples to apples when determining how well their students did on a test. If each section took a different test, teachers would not be able to collect this data.

This is nonsense. For example, if you need to test whether students know how to integrate polynomials, are you saying that the only way to test that is by giving them the exact same polynomial? Not to mention the fact that one can have different grading curves in different sections even if, for some unanticipated reason, different versions of the test end up being slightly different in difficulty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to teach kids that studying from old exams without express permission from the teacher if the course is cheating. If the teacher hands out old exam copies to study from, that's fine. If one is getting old exam questions from another student or from someone who has "files" of old exam questions, it is cheating.

The above is the definition I and many of the parents I have spoken with grew up with and it is not that difficult to understand. We can't tell our kids that it is up to the teachers to keep them from cheating; our kids need to be developing their own inner compasses to determine right from wrong. Blaming teachers for kids cheating confuses kids and makes cheating an issue that is murkier than it needs to be.

I think part of the problem is that some kids don't realize that asking friends about questions on a test or studying old tests from sources other than their teacher is cheating. I'm not sure why they don't know this at their age, but it needs to be made clear and then backed up by consequences.

It will hurt all the kids at TJ if the school gets a reputation as a place where kids cheat to get high GPAs.

Are you one of the lazy TJ teachers by any chance?

You "grew up" with a particular norm (and maybe others did as well) but that doesn't make it the universal norm. How do the old test papers get outside of TJ and into the hands of the selling companies? Are the teachers and the school aware of this? If so, what have they done to fix it? Repeating on every thread that it's not the teachers job and trying to define cheating to suit your mental model takes us nowhere.

What are TJ and the teachers doing about it? Tell me that and I will support it. I can't (nor you) can convince all parents to come up with a single plan. The school should. If they don't they suffer the consequences.

No, I am not a TJ teacher, but I am a parent of a recent TJ grad, so I have some knowledge of this through my child's insights.

The norm that I grew up with in terms of defining cheating is pretty common. Every school and university I attended had this standard, as did every school and university my spouse attended. Our kids have gone to schools and universities all over the US, and every one of those schools also had the same norm. Defining studying from old tests without the teacher's permission as cheating is not some personal "mental model" of mine: it is standard in many schools and universities all over the US.

If someone outside of school offers to sell you old tests that they keep in a personal file, doesn't that sound a bit fishy? Why should the teachers and the school have to "fix" the fact that people are obtaining old test copies without permission? Why not just teach kids how to avoid cheating and provide consequences for breaking the rules?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need to teach kids that studying from old exams without express permission from the teacher if the course is cheating. If the teacher hands out old exam copies to study from, that's fine. If one is getting old exam questions from another student or from someone who has "files" of old exam questions, it is cheating.

The above is the definition I and many of the parents I have spoken with grew up with and it is not that difficult to understand. We can't tell our kids that it is up to the teachers to keep them from cheating; our kids need to be developing their own inner compasses to determine right from wrong. Blaming teachers for kids cheating confuses kids and makes cheating an issue that is murkier than it needs to be.

I think part of the problem is that some kids don't realize that asking friends about questions on a test or studying old tests from sources other than their teacher is cheating. I'm not sure why they don't know this at their age, but it needs to be made clear and then backed up by consequences.

It will hurt all the kids at TJ if the school gets a reputation as a place where kids cheat to get high GPAs.

Are you one of the lazy TJ teachers by any chance?

You "grew up" with a particular norm (and maybe others did as well) but that doesn't make it the universal norm. How do the old test papers get outside of TJ and into the hands of the selling companies? Are the teachers and the school aware of this? If so, what have they done to fix it? Repeating on every thread that it's not the teachers job and trying to define cheating to suit your mental model takes us nowhere.

What are TJ and the teachers doing about it? Tell me that and I will support it. I can't (nor you) can convince all parents to come up with a single plan. The school should. If they don't they suffer the consequences.

No, I am not a TJ teacher, but I am a parent of a recent TJ grad, so I have some knowledge of this through my child's insights.

The norm that I grew up with in terms of defining cheating is pretty common. Every school and university I attended had this standard, as did every school and university my spouse attended. Our kids have gone to schools and universities all over the US, and every one of those schools also had the same norm. Defining studying from old tests without the teacher's permission as cheating is not some personal "mental model" of mine: it is standard in many schools and universities all over the US.

If someone outside of school offers to sell you old tests that they keep in a personal file, doesn't that sound a bit fishy? Why should the teachers and the school have to "fix" the fact that people are obtaining old test copies without permission? Why not just teach kids how to avoid cheating and provide consequences for breaking the rules?

This is about understanding other cultures and norms. In many Asian countries, including India and China, studying for a test often means going through old question papers and preparing to answer them. This is one method of study after the student has completed the text book and the teacher's notes. Preparing from old test papers is the final prep part, and is a very important step to ensure an A+ grade vs a lower grade which could mean a huge difference in the circumstances those kids face. It is hard for people in United States to understand this. So what happens when the parents of these children who were educated in that method comes over here, they try to follow what has worked for them. Understand that in these cultures, it is not cheating to study from old test papers. It is just another method of preparation. More needs to be done to understand and integrate people coming here from other cultures. Especially since the world is becoming more integrated, instead of arguing this is how it is here always and so that is how it should be. You can rail all you want, but it is impossible to make someone who grew up in that culture to accept what you are calling as cheating when all they think they are doing is final preparation which is perfectly legit. Perhaps understanding the cultural differences and then trying to bridge that gap, i.e, finding a reasonable way to solve it, it the way to go. Not forcing down on them by saying, tough luck, you are here and this is how we did it in our parents time and so you better adapt, or else leave. It doesn't work that way in today;s multicultural society. I know some people wish things were the way they were in the 60's, and I am not talking to that crowd. I am trying to explain the background for anyone reasonable trying to understand the problem. As full disclosure, I am someone who grew up in one of those cultures, but never prepared using old test papers, but many of my friends did. As a result my grades were not as great as theirs, and I did not go to elite schools some of my friends went, but in the end I ended up doing just as much as well as they did in their careers post-education.