Students Are Finding New Ways to Cheat on the SAT

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/us/politics/how-the-online-sat-may-be-vulnerable-to-cheating.html

by JumpCrisscross • 6 months ago

10 6 6 months ago

apparent2• 6 months ago

A variety of coding and SAT “prep” websites discuss ways to bypass Bluebook security. One way is to use a plug-in that seems like a mouse, but is, in fact, a video capture device. Another is a program called a “sandbox, an isolated virtual environment that can work without detection within a computer.

I assume that "plug-in" means peripheral? Seems very difficult to catch all of these people, since a proctor won't be able to inspect the device and tell whether it is a regular mouse or something trickier.

Virtual machines seem like a game of cat and mouse, and one which the SAT is likely to lose.

helpfulfrond• 6 months ago

https://archive.is/vFZDn

denimnerd42• 6 months ago

If the test is taken on personal laptops it's almost impossible to stop cheating. You can easily take video capture and send it out via 5g modem on a completely separate computer hidden inside of the laptop. Then you can receive answers back in very discreet ways like nearly imperceptible LEDs.

Same reason DRM-data rights management or DLP-data loss protection technologies are rather pointless against determined attackers. Anything that is permitted to be viewed can be copied.

leothetechguy• 6 months ago

Not from America, but can I ask... Is the SAT that difficult?

OkayPhysicist• 6 months ago

The SAT, by design, covers the entire difficulty range. Parts are easy, parts are hard, such that about half of students get less than half of it right, and 0.1% of students ace it. It's not merely pass-fail, they're trying to give a pretty granular rank to each student.

Thus, if the test is worth taking for a student (because they want to go to college), it's probably worth cheating on. Students outside the top 0.1% can appear better than their peers to improve their odds of getting into better universities, and students in the top 0.1% tend to be there due to intense extrinsic pressure, which may drive them to cheat to increase their certainty of acing it.

For a competent student, it's not hard to get an acceptable grade. For every student, it's difficult to achieve an exceptional grade.

apparent2• 6 months ago

It is not hard for many students to get a pretty good score (1350). But a score like this will not help you get into a top school, and might actually hurt you. Even having a very good score (1530) does not necessarily help you much, especially if you are from what is perceived to be a high-resource (wealthy) area. If you have a perfect score (1600), that would help you get into any school.

Admittedly, it wouldn't help that much if you are Asian and from a wealthy area, but if you cheated then you could spend time that you would have spent studying for the SAT instead doing something else that you could put on your application.

Students Are Finding New Ways to Cheat on the SAT

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