Grad students forced to have palm scans before writing tests

Louise Brown
Torstar News Service
January 11, 2010

[efoods]In a move that has prompted at least three complaints to Canada’s privacy czar, a growing number of professional programs such as medicine and business now require students to give a digital print of their finger, thumb or even veins in their palm to write the high-stakes entrance tests designed and run out of the United States.

The latest version is the new infrared scan of the blood vessels in your palm required by all 266,000 students around the world – 8,000 in Canada – who write the four-hour GMAT admissions test each year for a master’s of business administration (MBA) program.

The spyware is designed to foil fraud artists who hire other people to write the test for them, disguised sometimes in full wig and fake glasses, using a twin or even a spouse – one husband wrote a test for his wife wearing one of her dresses, said one test official, but was spotted when his five-o’clock shadow began to show.

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This article was posted: Monday, January 11, 2010 at 12:49 pm

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