[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by kermitology

^^^ I wouldn't say that's plagiarism. It's more a case of they were lucky to get a previous test before hand and the professor is lazy enough not to change questions.

It's very common to study off of old tests. I did it all the time in Engineering, and many of my professors would post the old tests for you to work on. While it sometimes helps you, it still comes down to knowing your stuff in order to do well.

Completely agree with Kermitology here (probalby because I'm an engineer here too).

Profs hand out old tests all the time. Hell I had one prof who let us take whatever we wanted into the tests so me and a bunch of buddies rounded up final exams of his that dated back to 1983 (this was in 2002 and the exams were all readily available through the engineering student's society) and made up a binder with completed examples of the 15 or so types of questions he tended to ask on his finals, and when the time for the finals came, I all of the questions on the test were altered versions of the 15 questions we had. Plagarism? Of course not. Cheating? Nope, not that either, as the prof said we could do it.

Plagarism is taking credit for other peoples work, getting old tests is just a smart way to study. Besides, when was the last time your boss told you you couldn't look something up?