by StaceyKoprince Thu Feb 21, 2008 10:44 pm
GMAC is definitely going after those sites already, and has already sued some sites.
At a conference in October, they said they are starting to go after these sites aggressively and they said they reserve the right to ban people from the GMAT permanently and cancel official scores retroactively if they can show that people viewed and/or posted "live" questions. So, if anyone runs across something online and is tempted to peek, don't. <hint--GMAC specifically called scoretop "defendants" at that conference--/hint> Without a GMAT score, you can't go to b-school.
The difficulty levels of the questions are determined during the experimental phase - after that, the difficulty levels are set and, if GMAC notices an unusual uptick in the percentage of people getting a question right (compared to its expected difficulty level), they will pull the question, not just reset the difficulty level. So it isn't the case that a lot of people suddenly getting a hard question right will cause it to be reset as an easier question for the rest of us.
The reason why you sometimes think something is a 700+ question when it isn't? You have individual strengths and weaknesses. These are not the same as the strengths and weaknesses across the entire test-taking population. So you're going to think some questions are easier when they are officially rated harder and vice-versa.
I'll send an email to my contact at GMAC to ask how individuals can report offending sites, so you can tell them directly if you run across anything. I'll let you know what I hear.
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep