The grades of 1,240 University of Waterloo students are being brought into question by the discovery that some of them learned of exam questions well before they wrote the test.

University officials are still trying to piece together exactly what happened with the first-year math course and who was involved in it.

What they do believe is that a tutoring service unaffiliated with the school somehow got its hands on a series of exam questions.

“A few of these questions were going to be used in the current year’s exam,” said Mario Coniglio, the school’s associate vice-president of academic affairs.

It’s not clear whether the leak came from last year’s exam or this year’s edition.

Questions aren’t always repeated between years, but Coniglio says they were in this case because the school was assessing the effect of changes to its first-year math curriculum.

After the exam, a photograph showing the leaked questions showed up in a Facebook group used by students of the math class.

News of the leak quickly spread across social media sites used by Waterloo students.

On Reddit, talk turned to Easy Ace, a tutoring service run by a former math student at the school.

Someone claiming to represent Easy Ace then posted to Reddit, claiming Easy Ace was behind the leak and saying questions from past exams would no longer be used by its service.

School officials are trying to verify whether the information in that Reddit post is legitimate.

Whether Easy Ace is involved with the leak or not, the entire incident has students talking about their experiences with third-party tutorial groups.

Student Sunny Li says she received an email, written in Mandarin, which advertised tutoring services for the math exam in question.

She says the email was directed only to students with Chinese backgrounds.

Students say it’s common for third-party tutors to target first-year students – sometimes in English and sometimes in Mandarin.

Li did not attend the tutorial, and admits that the exam “genuinely was really difficult.”

She says she feels it was unfair for some students to practice with questions that appeared on the actual exam.

“Once you have that advantage of being able to know the questions beforehand, you … know exactly what theories to memorize,” she said.

It is believed that as many as 200 students saw the leaked questions before writing the exam.

One of the items being investigated is whether any of those students even knew they were seeing real exam questions.

“They participated in this tutorial session very likely with the best of intentions, and may not have realized that they were being shown exam questions that were going to be used,” Coniglio said.

Still, students who weren’t at the session are concerned that those who were received a leg up – even if it wasn’t intentional.

“I know if I went over questions that I knew were on the exam beforehand, I would do a lot better on the exam,” said Ian Zinck.

School officials have yet to decide on their entire response to the leak. They will offer a supplementary exam to students who passed but feel they should get another chance at raising their mark to offset any cheating, and they may also discount all responses to the leaked questions.

Emails from CTV News to Easy Ace went unreturned. A phone call to the organization’s contact number connected us with a man who claimed not to work for the service.

At the address connected to Easy Ace, a neighbour says the former Waterloo student in question moved out last year.