Some Chinese students are using remote access apps to cheat on TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, and other US entry exams, fueled by the introduction of at-home testing
Viola Zhou / Rest of World : Tweets: @scholars_stage , @violazhouyi , @violazhouyi , and @baldingsworld Tweets: T. Greer / @scholars_stage : The stories I could tell https://restofworld.org/... Viola Zhou / @violazhouyi : #EXCLUSIVE Cheating professionals in China are taking advantage of at-home testing, introduced during the pandemic, to help students obtain near-perfect scores in exams such as TOEFL, GRE, and even LSAT, our investigation has found. https://restofworld.org/... via @restofworld Viola Zhou / @violazhouyi : Remote testing has made cheating so easy that it's often cheaper to cheat than to take a Toefl course. Students who hired proxies have applied to schools in the US, UK and Hong Kong, according to test-prep businesses. Some passed spoken tests through lip-syncing. https://twitter.com/... @baldingsworld : US universities China policies are a complete shambolic embarrassing joke. MIT and their famous “we have decided not to spy for China” must be so proud https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The pandemic pushed US entry exams into living rooms, and the proctoring industry scaled up to meet them — despite pushback from universities and lawsuits, Proctorio's client list grew over 500% from 2019 to 2021. That surveillance-first approach was already controversial: tools like Honorlock's movement-tracking software were accused of flagging ordinary behavior as suspicious.
Rest of World's investigation shows the other side of that trade-off: while proctoring vendors watched webcams, China-based cheating services used remote access apps to take the tests themselves, producing near-perfect TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT scores for clients. It extends a pattern already visible with Chegg's tutor marketplace, where homework help blurred into answer-selling — except here the entire exam, not just answers, is outsourced.
First-order effects
- Students buying these services obtain near-perfect scores on high-stakes US entry exams at prices the reporting suggests are often cheaper than legitimate test prep, directly undermining score-based admissions screening.
Second-order effects
- Test administrators behind TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT face pressure to pull back from at-home formats or harden identity verification, while proctoring vendors like Honorlock and Proctorio must show their monitoring can detect remote-access control — which webcam-based surveillance structurally cannot.
Third-order effects
- If proxy testing scales, admissions bodies shift weight back toward in-person, biometrically verified testing or alternative signals, unwinding the at-home convenience built during the pandemic and forcing the proctoring industry to compete on detection rather than surveillance volume.
The trend: Remote exam delivery created a professionalized cheating market that surveillance proctoring cannot catch, pushing high-stakes testing back toward controlled environments.