The 15 people caught taking entrance exams for those abroad reveals increasing pressure on Asian students to obtain visas to attend prestigious western schools

Fifteen Chinese nationals have been charged with impersonating students in order to defraud colleges through standardized tests, the justice department said on Thursday, hinting at a possible “iceberg” of cheating by students abroad.

According to the justice department, the 15 conspirators lived mostly in western Pennsylvania, where they had counterfeit Chinese passports sent to them to use as ID before taking standardized tests. They then impersonated students on tests such as the SAT, GRE and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).

The named defendants comprise seven men and five women, all between the ages of 19 and 26. Only Siyuan Zhao, a 24-year-old who the justice department said lived in Revere, Massachusetts, had been arrested as of Thursday morning. Two of the named defendants, Xiaojin Guo and Ning Wei, were believed to be in China. Those believed to be in the US had residences ranging from Santa Ana, California, to Blacksburg, Virginia and Boston.

The conspiracy to defraud colleges by way of the College Board and Educational Testing Services (ETS), lasted for four years, the justice department said.

Officials also said the scheme would have helped secure visas for the buyers abroad, as they would have been able to use student credentials to enter the US.

David Hickton, US attorney for the western district of Pennsylvania, told the Guardian it would be “misleading” to estimate how many fraudulent tests were taken, given the continuing investigation, but said the case “does relate to great institutions all across the country”.

The College Board and ETS are cooperating with the investigation, Hickton said.

“These students were not only cheating their way into the university, they were also cheating their way through our nation’s immigration system,” said special agent in charge John Kelleghan for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).



Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, an organization that advocates for education reform, said: “By all appearances there’s widespread cheating on admissions exams involving people in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.

“It’s hard to tell based on this report what proportion of the iceberg we’re looking at here. The Justice Department did not immediately answer questions about how many of the defendants represent buyers versus impostors, nor whether any are in custody or even in the United States.

“But this appears to be just one of the ways that students from around the world manipulate the US college admissions system, and it hurts honest kids from both the US and Asia,” Schaeffer continued, noting that the ETS last year withheld scores from Chinese and South Korean students who were suspected to have gained prior knowledge of the SAT.

Sources in China sent FairTest copies of advertisements and screenshots of conversations with buyers, Schaeffer said, including “advertisements from Chinese websites offering what purport to be advance copies of tests for $2,000 or $6,000”.

As the upper-middle class of China and South Korea has grown, so has the pressure for Asian students to attend prestigious western universities. In 2010, a consulting company published a report based on interviews with Beijing students that found 90% had submitted false recommendations and 70% had used other people to write their essays.

In 2013, a study published by EIC found that one in four Chinese students at Ivy League schools dropped out, possibly due to a lack of preparation or language skills.

Cheating by impersonation, as opposed to seeing an advance copy of the test or looking over someone’s shoulder, is rarer, less often detected or both. In 2011 six New York students were arrested on misdemeanor charges for an impersonation scheme that involved a college student from Long Island who was paid to take the SAT for students at his former high school. In that case, school administrators noticed the wide difference between the students’ grades and their exam scores.



The leaking of copies of tests appears to be a more common form of cheating, and Schaeffer said: “There have been problems with every SAT given this academic year in Asia, but it’s still unclear where the problem emanates from.”



FairTest urges colleges to adopt a “test optional admissions” system, relying on transcripts, curriculum, extracurricular activities and other factors rather than heavily weighting test scores.

Schaeffer acknowledged that such as system would put many international students at a disadvantage, due to the lack of familiarity between college admissions offices and secondary school systems abroad.

Twelve defendants were named in the indictment; three others remain under seal. Most of the fraudulent exams were taken in western Pennsylvania.

Stacy Caldwell, a vice-president for the College Board, said in a statement that the organization is committed to “identify and stop illegal activity that undermines the integrity of our exams”. She did not address its safeguards against fraud.