Now that is a Score ... GMAT Cheat Sheet Scandal

Last week GMAC won a lawsuit against ScoreTop on copyright violation. GMAC administers the GMAT test, a requirement for MBA admission in top schools. All the schools will say that GMAT score is not a criteria. It is true except when your score is low. GMAT is a gruelling 4 hour test, with 2 half hour essays, 1 quantitative skills section and 1 verbal and logic session. In this Computer Adaptive Test, the test takers get progressively more difficult questions as they answer more correctly. On the other hand, the test takers get easier questions as they answer more incorrectly. As the Business Week reports, some applicants used a service ScoreTop.com to get answers to questions in GMAT's question bank. Obviously, there are only limited number of questions and GMAC recycles them. ScoreTop is like a User Generated Content site with test takers contributing a few questons after they take a test. GMAC won the lawsuit that it retains the copyright for these questions that prevents anyone from publishing them. The bigger impact of the outcome is what GMAC is going to do with those who used ScoreTop services.

There's trouble in MBA Land, and it's not just the ultratight job market. A cheating scandal involving the use of a test prep Web site to get a sneak peek at questions on the B-school entrance exam, the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), may result in thousands of prospective MBA students having their results rescinded.

It is not clear whether GMAC can summarily cancel scores of anyone who used the ScoreTop. How will they prove intent? What if they had used an untraceable credit card? I do not think this is going to cause much repercussions for those who are already in. In the future these people will just use other means to get to the cheatsheets and won't use their own credit card. If GMAC and schools want this to be foolproof they need to think of other ways.