Singer: “They Loved Your GPA”

“DO NOT POST ANYTHING STUPID ON YOUR FACEBOOK” said my computer class teacher who is also the head of the IT department in my high school. That was the first day of school, and all senior were called to attend an assembly regret to our plans after graduation. Most of us knew we want to continue and stay in school, but we did not know how to start, except knowing that we have to take the SAT for sure.

Everyone started to panic, and a lot of us even started to bring SAT practice books to school. There was always at least one person in each class that was not listening to the teacher but doing SAT practice test. We talked about SAT tutor class, pre SAT scores, anything SAT related during class, at lunch break, after school. SAT was all we cared and talked about. Since my high school was one of the SAT test centers in Hong Kong, we were able to take the SAT together. Everyone arrived at least 30 minutes before the test started and was pumped up with caffeine hoping that would make it easier to get through that 5 hours of non stop brain usage.

Some people got their ideal score on the first try, and a lot like me had to take it again with hope to obtain a better score. A person in my year got a perfect score in the SAT and got accepted to MIT as a prospective student, and we were all very happy for him but jealous of him at the same time. After sending out the first application, the procedure was not so hard and complicated to do anymore since most university request similar documents. A lot of us began to receive acceptance letters from universities a month after the application deadlines, everyone was happy and started to relax. But someone … should not have relaxed … and that is the student who got accepted to MIT with a perfect SAT score.

Thanks to that student, me and other students in his economic class got to have a free class period. An email was sent to us from our economics teacher to notify us that “Class is cancelled today… I have to attend an emergency meeting with the principle and one of your classmate”. Everyone was curious and was looking and asking around to dig as much information as possible. Different kind of rumors started to spread, but it never got into that student or any teacher’s’ ears. We were very secretive about the rumors, and there’s no physical or digital record of those rumors. Maybe we unconsciously took the advice our computer class teacher gave us, or maybe we all had the common sense that it is not smart to leave any footage of “crimes”, especially when the Internet, technology, and modern research tools have become so advanced.

Later, we found out that MIT had evoked its acceptance letter because the student was guilty of academic dishonesty. The student modified his economic AP exam score, and did not report his actual score to MIT. The student’s plan was perfect until our economic teacher found a Facebook group he was in that’s for SAT prep with a link to a Chinese website that sells immediate AP, SAT exam answers, and fake exam scores. At the end, people do not only look at your achievements, but also the kind of person you present yourself as.