Kobe Vergara
Staff Writer
After many students prepared over the summer to take the August 25 SAT, it was later found out that it was a recycled test, already taken by overseas students.
Once the SAT finished all over the US, many students began to hear about rumors of the exam being a recycled exam from Asia. This caused an uproar as many students felt that some gained an unfair advantage versus other students.
News came out from various tweets and posts on social media. Many of the posts asked if College Board was aware that the test they gave was a previous test given in China and South Korea.
Furthermore, the actual test itself and its answer key were posted from various sources on Chinese websites. Even more surprising is that they were posted months before the actual SAT.
This caused great controversy as it allowed for those overseas students to have an unfair advantage. For example, students took practice tests in order to prepare for the exam, which included previous tests from past years.
While College Board does release previous tests for their Question and Answer service, they only release the May international exams. For this, the October 2017 international exam was not supposed to come out for public use.
Many international students who take their test in Asia come to the US to take the exam again, in order to get another chance at the test.
Students who took the international October 2017 SAT saw the same exam again. Some students on Twitter tweeted that they had seen the questions and the test before.
However, there was also the argument that no one knew that questions from the older exam would be on the August 25 test. No one was actually able to predict questions on the exam. It was only after everyone completed the exam that some students recognized the test and were able to share about its reuse.
While it is normal for College Board to recycle old questions for their new exams, many are angered that College Board decided to recycle a whole exam. Students believe that for the amount of money and time they spend preparing for the test, that College Board should be able to provide fair tests.
Once the College Board was notified that the exam was leaked, students again felt uneasy due to their fear of the exam being cancelled. This would again be another controversy as students felt divided on the issue.
While some students believed it was College Board’s duty to cancel the test due to unfair advantage, others did not want their final SAT test to be canceled.
Some of these students include seniors, as they have to apply to college soon and do not have time to take another SAT, or those students who spent their whole summer studying for this exam.
College Board’s response to the incident stated that they would cancel any person’s score if they were believed to be cheating, and ban them further College Board tests.While this response may seem drastic, many students were still able to receive their scores in the end, while some reported of delayed scores.
While many students were still able to receive their scores, this incident brought up the issue of College Board reusing tests. With one of their biggest claims being that every student has a fair advantage, they must live up to their claims in the future.
