Student Loan Blog : Business Week

College Admissions Offices Using Facebook as Recruiting Tool

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:39:00 GMT

A growing number of graduate school admissions and college officers are turning to Facebook for recruiting, communicating with potential students and providing up-to-date news on the school through the social networking site, instead of relying on more traditional recruiting methods like mass mailings or emails, according to an article in Business Week (“The Admissions Office Finds Facebook,” Sept. 28, 2008).

A recent study indicated that a full 29 percent of university admissions departments surveyed now use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, to recruit new students. To date, about 60 institutions have gone so far as to establish official pages for their school on Facebook, according to Nora Barnes, director for the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

“If you're an undergraduate or graduate institution and you’re looking to attract people 35 and under, then I think you have to go to Facebook because that’s where your opportunity is,” Barnes said.

Admissions Officers Use Ads, Fan Pages, Chats to Attract Students

While some schools have leveraged Facebook as a marketing tool, purchasing ads to target students based upon their age and where they live, other institutions have focused on maintaining their Facebook fan pages, uploading pictures, news pieces, and videos detailing recent campus events.

San Diego State University’s Facebook page, for instance, features video footage of the school’s involvement with the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach and its students’ visit to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.

Scott Minto, the director of the admissions office for the school’s Sports Business Management MBA Program, uses Facebook to invite students to college admissions open house events in different cities around the country. He says that the school’s Facebook community has become so active that he now uses it as his sole means of communication with many students.

The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management put up a Facebook admissions page just a year ago in response to increased student demand and has experienced phenomenal success, said Richard Powers, assistant dean and director of MBA programs. Cheryl Millington, the school’s director of admissions, holds Q&A sessions with students that have drawn about 100 students each time.

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MBA Cheating Scandal Ends With Almost 100 GMAT Scores Cancelled

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:46:00 GMT

In June, 6,000 MBA hopefuls saw their aspirations come crashing down when it came to light that their GMAT scores could be cancelled due to a cheating scandal that involved the illegal posting of live GMAT test questions on Scoretop.com. Most of those students named in the controversy can now breathe a sigh of relief.

The Graduate Management Admission Council, the company that administers the GMAT test, announced that only 84 test takers, not the several hundred or thousand students as many originally feared, would have their test scores voided, according to a Business Week article (“Nearly 100 Would-Be MBAs Nailed in GMAT Scandal,” Sept. 9, 2008).

Of the 84 students whose scores were cancelled, 72 posted messages on Scoretop.com saying that they recognized test-prep questions from the site on their GMAT exam. These individuals will not be allowed to retest and, as a result, may not be able to qualify for a MBA program that requires the GMAT as an admissions prerequisite.

The remaining 12 individuals who had their scores cancelled, but who didn’t post test question information on the Scoretop site, will be eligible to retest after three years. Some 500 score reports sent to colleges and universities by the 84 test takers were also cancelled by GMAC, which notified all affected schools of the cancelled scores.

GMAC President David Wilson said that the decision to cancel scores was based on extensive analysis of data from the Scoretop Web site as well as GMAT registration and examination information.

“We take the action of canceling scores very seriously, with a full understanding of our ethical responsibility to both students and schools to protect the integrity of the test and the application process,” Wilson stated in a recent press release (“Graduate Management Admission Council Completes Investigation of GMAT Test Takers Who Used Scoretop.com; Scores Canceled,” Sept. 9, 2008).

Colleges to Handle Students With Cancelled Scores Differently

At the number-one ranked University of Chicago business school, two students enrolled this fall had their scores cancelled, leaving administrators only two weeks after GMAC’s score-cancellation announcement to figure out what to do prior to the start of the new semester.

Derrick Bolton, MBA admissions director at Stanford University, was notified of 20 cancelled scores, including one from a student who already graduated and 10 from applicants who were denied admission. If any of these 10 applicants re-apply in the future, Bolton said, they will be required to provide detailed explanations of their involvement with Scoretop before their application is considered. The fate of the student who already graduated has yet to be determined.

University of Michigan’s dean of the Ross School of Business, Robert Dolan, said the school will strictly enforce its honor code, which prohibits cheating, for any Ross students identified by GMAC as part of the scandal on a case-by-case basis.

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GMAT Cheating Scandal Causes Students to Sweat Their Future

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:37:00 GMT

Over 6,000 MBA students have been implicated in a huge cheating scandal involving the website Scoretop which illegally provided “live” prep questions to students taking their Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT — the test that many MBA programs require for admission to graduate school, according to an article in Business Week (“GMAT Cheating Controversy Grows,” June 27, 2008).

Contrary to authorized test preparation companies like Kaplan or Manhattan GMAT which legally purchase retired test questions from GMAT to help prepare their member students, Scoretop extended 30-day VIP service to students who paid the $30-fee to access questions that were actively being used on GMAT exams.

On June 23, the Graduate Management Admission Council, the owner of the GMAT, won a lawsuit against Scoretop for copyright infringement, since Scoretop published the “live” GMAT questions online without permission. The judgment allowed the court to seize Scoretop’s hard drive, which contained payment and other data, and to identify more than 6,000 individuals who had paid for the website’s service.

GMAC originally said it would cancel the scores of all students who cheated on the exam, make sure they could never take the GMAT again, and notify the respective business schools of students who had cheated on the exam.

Robert Burgoyne, GMAC’s legal counsel recently said, however, that GMAC probably wouldn’t cancel the scores of all 6,000 Scoretop VIP members who took the test, just those who knew using the questions was illegal. “We'll look for something that actually links people to conduct they should have known was improper,” Burgoyne said.

MBA students across the country are justifiably nervous. Those who have applied to business schools and used the Scoretop website may have their scores cancelled and may not be able to apply to an MBA program in the future. And currently enrolled students may be thrown out of their MBA program.

“I am extremely stressed out,” one GMAT test-taker who used Scoretop questions commented in response to BusinessWeek.com's original story about the cheating scandal. “I am so upset and worried right now."

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