An undetermined number of students in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea were able to raise their scores substantially last year on the verbal part of the most widely used entrance exam to American graduate schools by logging on to Web sites in those countries that post questions and answers memorized by previous test takers, test administrators said on Wednesday.
After uncovering the Chinese- and Korean-language Web sites and assessing their effect on test scores, test administrators have suspended the electronic version of the tests, known as the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE). Because the tests were given at testing centers six days a week, the questions were regularly reused, making the tests susceptible to such cheating.
Now, the test will be given in those three countries only on two days so far -- Nov. 23 and March 15 -- and on paper, to guard the security of the test questions, which will be used only once.
An investigation, by the Educational Testing Service, which designs the exam, was prompted in part by the concerns of some American college deans that the high verbal scores of some Asian students did not match their actual fluency in English.
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