Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
America’s top colleges and finance-industry recruiters have long had their eye on teenage whiz-kids who compete in a prestigious high-school math contest. Now, allegations of cheating are threatening to disrupt it. WSJ: Online leaks of tests for the country’s best-known math contest — the 74-year-old American Mathematics Competition — are upsetting students who have spent years preparing for the exams. Ahead of the coming school year and test season, angry parents and math coaches have pushed the contest’s administrator to tighten controls. The incident is the latest byproduct of a high-pressure college-admissions race that can lead students to look for any edge to get ahead.
[…] As early as elementary school, students interested in flexing their math knowledge beyond what is taught in school can participate in math clubs and competitions. Each year, more than 300,000 students through high school participate in the AMC’s first round of multiple-choice tests. Several thousand top performers are invited to sit for a higher-level test, and from there, around 600 compete in national “math olympiads.” The top six math students in the nation then represent the U.S. internationally; the U.S. won its ninth International Mathematical Olympiad title this summer.
Murmurs about cheating in the AMC have circulated for a few years, participants say, but reached critical levels during the past school year. The entirety of exams at each level of the competition were available online hours or days before students sat for the tests, a spokeswoman for the Mathematical Association of America confirmed. Testing sites in the U.S. and abroad receive the questions online early to give proctors time to print them out for the in-person exams.
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