Yep. You always have a choice. If cheating is wrong, it does not become acceptable just because everyone else is doing it.

Agreed, but it feels like a Pyrrhic victory to not cheat, then get lower scores than the cheaters.

Are those exams a contest? Like, they will only take the best N percentiles? Because if not, you’re competing only against yourself and should ignore others’ grades

It's an incredibly privileged Pov to say it isn't a contest. These kids entire futures are impacted by these scores.

Well, not once the scores become meaningless because everyone assumes they cheated.

I’m literally asking. I haven’t said it’s not a contest

Ivy League kids tend to not be facing some extreme economic precarity. In fact a decent number of them likely have enough family wealth to not need to work a day in their lives. The others are unlikely to face too much trouble over a few Bs at Brown.

> These kids entire futures are impacted by these scores.

Has that changed since I was in school? After I got my degree, not a single person or entity in the workforce ever asked for my grades. They just wanted to see the degree.

Yes they are, that's what 'graded on a curve' means. It's common in the US to give students a percentile or Z-score or T-score rather than the raw score for the examination. This was a source of massive frustration to me when I first encountered because I had no way of self-reviewing my exam performance to guess which questions I might have gotten wrong.

I did not go to an Ivy League but many of my classes at an alright school were graded on a curve and so C was average, B/D was one standard deviation above/below, and A/F was two.

if they are graded on a curve then they are competing against each other.

> Are those exams a contest?

Yes