The experience of this year’s AP Exams have been extremely stressful for Galileo’s seniors, as there has been concern from students over their exams being potentially cancelled and having to be retaken due to cases of cheating.
On Tuesday, May 6th, the AP Government exam took place at around 12 pm, and after it was finished, word quickly spread that there was an account of someone cheating outside the exam room and another person “bragging” about how easy it was to partake in cheating. The individual who talked about cheating was speaking to a teacher, who then reported it to a proctor, as even the mention of cheating on an AP Exam is extremely prohibited.
On Friday of that week, Galileo’s AP Proctor individually spoke to each of the AP Government classes about the potential cheating of multiple students that was suspected because of the students who cheated or spoke about it. She then specified that there would be an investigation taking place in order to find out if more students cheated on the exam, and that security footage of the hallways would also be checked.
Furthermore, she expressed her disappointment and stress over the blatant cheating that occurred and how it ruins things for everyone. These occurrences openly jeopardized the scores of all 100+ students taking the exam, since it took only two students to be found cheating to have all students’ tests to be cancelled and having to be made up on another day.
During the days I was waiting for the outcome of the situation, I was extremely anxious about the idea of having to retake the exam, since the studying I did leading up to the test was already quite tedious.
Subsequently, on the day of the AP Calculus exam which was Monday, May 12th, another student was found cheating during the exam which was reported by the proctor to the students taking it, this time inside the exam room. Fortunately it was only one student, and there were no other accounts of cheating on this exam, but many students were concerned about the possibility of more people being potentially caught.
The fact that another of these occurrences happened again shocked me quite a bit, and the overall stress of my classmates leftover from the first situation put me in even more of a frenzy over having to possibly retake two tests.
The day after, the AP Proctor reported that thankfully, the students’ scores on the AP Government would not have to be cancelled, since there was nothing found on the security footage despite it being a close call.
As a student who has taken at least 7 AP Exams over the past few years in high school, finding out that people in your class cheated and were willing to jeopardize their classmates’ exams brings me a lot of frustration, along with disappointment. It is simply frustrating knowing that cheating on an AP Exam is well known to have severe consequences for yourself and those around you, yet people are still willing to do it.
I know that myself and others in that testing room have studied extremely hard to get to where we are now, and it is unfair that the effort put in up until that exam day would have gone to waste. An AP exam is different from a regular test, obviously since it potentially gives students credit in college which is a huge deal, but the course load that goes towards helping students prepare is rigorous and individuals put a lot of time and effort into their studies for AP courses especially.
It’s completely reasonable for people to be overwhelmed by an AP course and struggle in it, because these courses are meant to be difficult for high school students, but there are different ways to deal with its difficulty other than cheating. Furthermore, I felt sad for the AP teachers who have worked hard to prepare and support students over the school year for the test, who would have to find out that a student resorted to cheating rather than trying their best.
These experiences collectively emphasize how important academic integrity is for the well-being of students individually and the community they are in. Moving forward, it’s crucial that students value their own efforts and trust their abilities when it comes to facing academic challenges.
