I recently heard from a university professor that ETS’ TOEFL code had been broken by some people in China. What does it mean to “break” a standardised testing code, and how would one do it?
(No, this isn’t a plea from someone who wants to take another ETS test - done enough of them, thank you!)
Floating this back to the top in the hopes that someone will answer…
I did go and look around a little bit the first time, but Google wasn’t much help. 
Not sure what to search under.
Because I remember hearing that, too, a while back–“Hey, you know, somebody broke those standardized testing codes…”
I was unaware they had “codes”. Weird…
I asked my SO who works for a large test prep company. He said he’d look into it.
I’ll report back anything he finds.
Is the TOEFL computerized now as well? This could mean that someone broke the copy protection/encryption and got the answers out of the software.
Maybe there’s a pattern to the answers? (E.g., ADCDBD (ad finitum), or something similar…)
I don’t know if there is a “code” for the TOFEL, but there was an article in the Washington Post about a year ago about how tests had been compromised.
This was more in regard to the GRE but also applied to the TOFEL–IIRC.
There are prep schools in China that prepare students in taking these tests, which are required for admission to US colleges. Copies of the tests had been stolen from the ETS and were/are available to students in China for a price.
So, if you are a Chinese student planning on going to grad school in the US, you have the option of paying for the answers to the tests required for admission to American grad schools.
I work at a large university and have seen Chinese students with impressive TOFEL scores who can not speak English. Being American, I am not sure how the TOFEL is scored, but let us say it is like a SAT section being on the scale of “200-800” points. A European grad student I know had a “600” and spoke fluent English; a Chinese student had a “780” and had trouble communicating. The European student said the Chinese student’s score indicated a total of 2-4 or so wrong answers on the entire test. (like I said, I do not know how these things are scored, but that is not the point)
But the student couldn’t speak English.
An anecdotal story: I was standing in a line behind 2 professors for something and overheard their conversation. One professor was asking the other for advice about accepting grad students into his lab. The first professor mentioned that he had two Chinese prospective students with 800/800 scores on the qualitative and quantitative sections of the GRE. The second professor laughed and said: “Of course, all the Chinese do. Don’t even pay attention to GREs or TOFELs with the Chinese–the scores are all BS. Look at the other stuff if you want them.”
Not every Chinese student has bullshit test scores, but enough do that grad schools are on the lookout. And if you’re a person accepting a Chinese student based on fantastic test scores–the word is:buyer beware.
If you are a Chinese student, there is a lot of incentive to go to the US for post grad education. Since the TOFEL and GRE are required tests, there must be a market for providing acceptable scores on these tests. And if you are in the business of advertising high scores through your prep course, stealing the answers is one way of guaranteeing results.
How do they steal the results?
That really is the question. I’ve heard they pay guys with photographic memories to take the tests and then write down the screens they’ve seen. Other stuff involves burglary in the US, but I can’t know that.
This stuff can be good business.
I’m not sure how it happens; I’m pretty sure that it does.