New depths of cheating hurt everyone involved.
The SAT test: four long hours in a stuffy, sometimes sterile classroom, no. 2 pencil embedded between your thumb and index finger, calculator fuming from exhaustion; a grueling procedure to complete so early on a Saturday morning.
Students perform poorly in social situations because of all the time spent studying for the test; teachers spend weeks veering from their prepared lesson plans to help prepare for it, yet the only time that (hopefully) four-digit score will hold any real meaning in your life is in your college acceptance (or denial) letter.
Luckily none of us will have to deal with that again.
Unless, of course, you're an SAT Test Faker. A graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City charges a flat rate of around $800 for every time he takes the SATs for some of the New York private school system's finest "slackers," according to a New York Post article.
"Having come up in the public school system, which overemphasizes test-taking skills to people who want to excel, I realized that this was something I could do for the idiotic private school kids who were too lazy and afraid to open a book," the now-university student said.
Most of his clients are "lazy, upper-middle-class kids with professional parents who have coasted through high school and now need good SAT scores to get into decent colleges."
Great. Now we not only have to compete against the ridiculously smart kids who throw off curves and averages, but the rich kids who can often pay their way to success.
But another scam is beginning to plague the SATs: students pretend to have physical or psychological disorders.
Justifiably, students with disabilities can receive extra time to complete their SATs without college admission offices knowing of their disabilities.
That practice is now tainted, however, by wealthy parents with ties or influence in the medical field. These parents obtain medical diagnoses of disability for their students to ensure an unfair advantage, according to a U.S. News & World Report article, "Our Cheating Hearts."
And sadly, the parental advantage doesn't stop at SATs and college admissions.
In a recent social phenomenon, "helicopter parents," are attending job fairs, handing out resumes and following up on job interviews, all for the sake of their adult children.
"... Parents sometimes worry that today's young people aren't as motivated to work as previous generations, so they feel inclined to do some nudging," helicopter parent Diane Krier-Morrow said in an Arizona Republic article Sunday.
But the spoiled children are at fault, too.
"They've become so accustomed to having their parents take care of every aspect of their lives -- and not assuming any responsibility or taking initiative for themselves -- that they expect their parents to continue to take care of things for them," Michael Ellis, the director of career and life education at Delaware Valley College said.
Now we know which kids had training wheels till they were 11.
There are so many people these days who believe cheating will lead to success, that it's the only way to win. And sadly, it often works out and reaffirms their faith in an increasingly corrupt system.
But it hurts the rest of us, who spend less time studying for exams than some spend looking to hire a double, who put in an honest day's work every day, who are sometimes naive enough to believe the right way will eventually pay off.
The cheating needs to stop. It makes it harder to compete in a world where cheating becomes the silently condoned part of the rules.
Kirsten Keane is a journalism sophomore who doesn't like cheaters (obviously). Contact her at: Kirsten.Keane@asu.edu.
