MBA Game Plan - Business School Admissions Advice

Many people assumed that the Scoretop.com story was over when the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in favor of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) in its copyright infringement case against Scoretop operate Lei Shi. The story may only get bigger, however, as GMAC reports that they have one of Scoretop's hard drives and intend to punish those who paid the site for access to "real" GMAT questions.

According to the BW story, GMAC has names of more than 1,000 of Scoretop's paying customers, and intends to cancel those people's scores, notify the business schools to which they applied, and will not permit them to take the GMAT again. Said Judy Phair, GMAC's vice-president for communications, "We have a hard drive, and we're going to be analyzing it. If you used the site and paid your $30 to cheat, your scores will be canceled. They're in big trouble."

What's most interesting is that, since Scoretop had been around since 2003, some of their clients are likely in business school now or have already earned their degrees. While it's too early to tell what directors at top MBA programs might do if they learn that some of their students or alumni were Scoretop clients, nothing is off the table at this point.

"There's an infraction, that's for sure," Joe Fox, director of MBA programs at Washington University's Olin Business School, told BusinessWeek. "At a minimum it flies in the face of our code of professional conduct. We could do anything we wanted—from a slap on the wrist to expulsion from the program—and we'd be well within our rights."

Needless to say, if you're looking for GMAT prep programs and materials, stick with the scrupulous players. If your own internal compass isn't enough to steer you away from the likes of Scoretop.com, just consider how much the risk outweighs the reward. As the BW article rightly points out, the odds of a test taker seeing a Scoretop question on the real exam are extremely low, meaning there's not much of an edge to be gained. Stick with a legitimate player, get your real GMAT questions from GMAC's Official Guide for GMAT Review, and practice, practice, practice!