The Perfect Score: Cheating on the SAT

 

(CBS News) 

For Sam Eshaghoff, getting a high score on the SAT college admissions exam was more than a point of pride. It was a lucrative business. As Alison Stewart reports, other students paid Eshaghoff up to $2,500 each to take their tests using easily manufactured fake IDs. His scam came crashing down in fall 2011, when he was arrested for criminal impersonation and fraud. Eshaghoff has since accepted a plea deal, but the case still raises major questions about the integrity of the test itself.

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The following script is from "The Perfect Score" which aired on Jan. 1, 2012. Alison Stewart is the correspondent. Katherine Davis, producer.

This past September, a 19-year-old college student named Sam Eshaghoff made national news when he was arrested and charged with fraud and criminal impersonation. His crime was taking the SAT and ACT tests for other people. He was so good at it other students paid him thousands of dollars to take the exams for them.

The district attorney who charged him says Sam Eshaghoff was able to take the SATs at least 16 times which has raised questions about the integrity and security surrounding one of the most important tests millions of high school students ever take.

Tonight, for the first time, Sam Eshaghoff tells us how and why he did it.

Sam Eshaghoff: I thought that there was an easy way to make money. And just like any other easy way to make money, it's always too good to be true.

Alison Stewart: Who told you you were in trouble?

Eshaghoff: My parents got a phone call saying that there was a warrant for my arrest, which was scary and shameful. I felt like my world was going to come crashing down.

Until he was arrested in September, Sam Eshaghoff seemed like the perfect kid. At New York's Great Neck North High School, he was a top student, vice president of the business club and a varsity athlete, but what may have been his greatest talent was the one that got him in trouble: his ability to ace standardized tests, which was how he began a double life as a con man.

Kathleen Rice: I would call him an academic gun for hire. That's what he was.

Stewart: People just needed him to get a job done and he got it done.

Rice: And he was the man.

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice filed criminal charges against Eshaghoff and the students who hired him.

Rice: This was a huge fraud from my perspective. This was lots of money changing hands, there were high stakes involved, and there was forgery, there was criminal impersonation. That's a fraud. That's a fraud on many different levels, but most importantly against the kids who play by the rules.

Stewart: During the course of your investigation, what did you discover about the process of taking the SAT and the security associated with taking an SAT test?

Rice: How incredibly easy it is to cheat the system. There is absolutely no security in place whatsoever to prevent criminal impersonation like we see here from happening.

Stewart: So if I went up to any of those kids and I say, "Do you know what this guy did?", they'd all know?

Eshaghoff: Every single person would know who I am and what I do.

Eshaghoff says paid test takers were an open secret among students at Great Neck North. He became the best known, but he says he was not the first.

Eshaghoff: I had heard of it happening successfully in my own high school.

Stewart: So tell me about taking the mental leap from "well, I heard other kids doing it" to "I think I'm going to do this."

Eshaghoff: Well, it all started with some kid approaching me. He's like, "Yo, you're good on your SATs and I'm not. And you know this is possible so how much is it gonna take?"

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[beach22lover]

Taking the thumbprint of each test taker at the entrance and scanning to see if that print has been used before, monitored by a professional, should be a deterrent to this problem.

[teapartylover]

Affirmative action (racial preference) causes the same result as this fraudulent test-taker: Intelligent applicants who studied hard and scored well are denied admission to colleges, in favor of applicants who are given extra points on their scores although they did nothing to deserve it. Therefore, why aren't those who implement racial preferences also arrested and scorned?

[Gary_2040]

Life isn't fair.

Do you also have the same issues with the preferences given to women through affirmative action? How about the slots saved for legacy admits who are predominately White? What the spots saved for athletes?

Most of the individuals involved in this scam are wealthy, White students. They don't have any excuse for doing poorly if you believe the rhetoric: They have "good" parents; They have attended "good" schools and lived in "good" neighborhoods. Why aren't they capitalizing on the numerous advantages they enjoy?

Btw, if these students were so intelligent why would they need someone to take their tests for them? Also, affirmative action, by law, provides opportunities for those with comparable scores, particularly at the selective universities.

[avidvoter]

Why would 60 Minutes waste an entire segment of their show, and seem to be so outraged, that it is too easy to take someone else's test and ignore the more serious issue of voter fraud? The segment should have been devoted to showing how easy it is to rig elections. How can anyone be for tighter testing security and against photo ids for voting? I am not for any kind of cheating, but you only harm yourself when you get into a college that is over your head. Look how many you harm when you elect a President that is in over his head.

[teapartydoc]

Is it any wonder why people don't respect the credentialing industrial complex any more? The public schools pretend to educate us, the testing companies pretend to evaluate our potential, and the colleges, universities, and professional schools pretend to turn out doctors, lawyers and business people, when everyone knows they all end up learning their professions on the job after they get out. Cut the crap. Abolish all this save our tax dollars and go back to apprenticeships. They way Western Civilization is collapsing we'll be there before we know it any way.

[RRRoark]

Does anyone else see the hilarity of CBS being "shocked, shocked I tell you" about the low threshold for test taker verification for the SAT while opposing theverification of voters through similar photo ID requirements??

[Jerm1380]

"But you don't have to be a brainiac to cheat the system.."

You also don't have to be a brainiac to do decent enough on the SATs...The Math section is like at an average 9th grade level...the verbal section defintely has words I never heard of so that part was tough...

I don't mind the emphasis on SAT/ACTs since it's the only common denominator in all of academia for high school kids...Different schools/different teachers/different classes all lead to uncomparable GPAs across the student body so 3.0 for one kid at one place w/ a full load of AP/Honors classes would be a more meaningful accomplishment than a kid w/ a 4.0 somewhere else taking remedial classes.

[egonemo87]

Ms Stewart, I was "shocked, shocked" that CBS would ask this revenue earning student, if he felt that what he did was unethical?

Do you ever ask that question of yourself or your fellow "journalist" when they fail to ask a politician an actual question or when they do not refuse to smear a candidate? Has any of the CBS "journalists", all of whom complained about Pres. Bush taking a working vacation at his Texas ranch that he was not spending enough time working, yet fail to denote the 10 day over $4 million dollar vacation that Mr Obama just finished.

Ms Stewart, why not you to a nanometer deep study of the cost of Presidential vacations since FDR. Include in this study the cost of FDR shipping off his wife so he could be with Ms Mercer and JFK's trips to his lovers and include Michelle's O's Spanish vacation. Which president spent the most?

I am nearly certain that your 60 Minutes Editor would spike such a story line --- Honesty to CBS News is like Truth to PRAVDA

[sivadthegood]

This kid is so caught up in himself and own little world. He acts as if he was being helpful to these kids he cheated for. Helpful? What it gave you a warm fuzzy to get these kids into a school they would not have been able to without you? Was that warm fuzzy before or after you created the "bidding wars" you spoke of? YOu don't get to claim that you are some sort of Robin hood, helping these kids. When you are only working for the highest bidder. And by the way you did harm people with this. You have destroyed the integrity of the tests you took as well as the schools that eventually accepted these scores. That means that anybody who has taken these tests or gone to these schools is subject to questioning.

You did not "help" any of these people. YOu harmed everyone that you took a test for and you harmed all those students that have worked so hard to get where they are.

Don't pretend to not know what you did was wrong. And please don't act as if you anything you did was helpful in any way. For every one of these idiots that you helped get into these school, there is one very hard working person who deserved to have that slot.

[yougot2bkidding]

I can't see why we should be surprised. Some families spend thousands of dollars on for their middle schooled aged children to build a portfolio for Ivy League schools. This is just the next step in that process.

[summergirl54]

I remember the journalist asking where the "clients" got this kind of money. When I was in high school, between my allowance and whatever I earned at a fast-food restaurant, I had just enough money to buy records, clothes and maybe go to the movies with my friends. I can't help thinking that at least some of the clients' parents gave them the money because they wanted to help their kids get into college. If so, I feel they are even more guilty than the kids and should also be prosecuted.