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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.
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Unless the prof specifically has asked to have all tests handed in after people receiving marks and having a look (I've had a couple of profs do this) there isn't anything wrong with it (i.e. it was a stolen test they were using). A past exam is really just a good study aid. Those people still needed to go in and write the answers down to the questions they had studied before hand. If they've written the answers correctly they have successfully learned the material the prof wanted them to learn.
heck didn't everybody use an Edge book for high school diploma exams? I know I certainly did and it was very much encouraged by the teachers and school that students purchase the Edge book consisting of the last handful diploma exams.
Along the lines of profs giving out old exams etc. I had a course in my major that had a typically brutal final (talking average of 20-30% year after year). You were allowed to bring in any class notes and two reference books to this test and still the marks were low. When a few of us were studying for the exam the night before we noticed that every day the prof had handed out a sheet with two problems on it...one on the front side and one on the back side. They were problems from an alternate text to the course and text we used for the prereq. While looking at these problems we noticed that he only ever covered one of them in class and completely ignored the other. We had a number of these unanswered problems and by the time the second/third week of the semester rolled around you started to not even look at them outside of class (the class also had a brutal lab that took way too much of your time).
Based on past averages, bringing in notes and texts/references wasn't providing a lot of help and, if it was, it was taking too long for people to find what they needed. We took a wild stab and decided the exam may be coming from these unanswered questions and we'd bring in the answer manual as one of our texts (dogeared at the appropriate pages). People were saying we were crazy and that he'd never allow a solutions manual into the exam.
As we entered the exam hall we asked the prof whether or not we could bring in the solutions manual for this particular test. He gave a knowing grin and said "looks like a reference book to me and it might even be helpful".
Needless to say the 3 of us aced the exam and blew any chance of scaling the marks up for the other students. Man were they pissed.
University isn't about learning everything in the notes and texts, it's figuring out the systems and patterns so you know what to concentrate on during your studying. It's about figuring out what you can blow off or do half assed and what you can't.