Imagine you sit down to take a chemistry final – a crucial test that will determine your grade for the quarter. You survey the overcrowded lecture hall, hastily write your name on the test and take a deep breath in. Turning to the first page, you let out a sigh of relief.
You have seen these questions before.
Unbeknown to many Bruins, this can be a reality for students who have access to UCLA’s test banks. These often secretive databases allow students to access tests, quizzes, homework and syllabi from past years. Various test banks circulate UCLA’s campus, but many are inaccessible to the average UCLA student. While some community members approve of test banks, others have raised concerns about equity, academic integrity and intellectual property.
The UCLA Community Programs Office manages a test bank available to all students, whereas prestigious university-run organizations, such as the UCLA Alumni Scholars Club and UCLA Regents Scholars Society, offer test banks exclusively for their members. Additionally, student-run Greek life chapters and clubs often maintain their own test banks. Although these organizations operate with the university’s permission, with some clubs receiving university funding, their programs are not officially supervised by UCLA staff.
There is no official UCLA or UC policy on test banks, according to Jessica Cattelino, chair of the UCLA Academic Senate. The senate is a collection of faculty committees that oversees academic matters.
Since the CPO test bank is open to everybody, it is a primary option for many students. To access the test bank, which is located at the CPO front desk in the Student Activities Center, students hand in a graded assignment from any class and receive a sticker on their Bruincard, granting them access for the rest of the quarter. Students can access the test bank in five-minute appointments, printing up to five exams per session for 10 cents a page.
CPO Operations Assistant Abraham Tejeda-Martinez explained that the CPO’s test bank is primarily intended for first-generation students or students from low-income backgrounds who are less likely to belong to organizations that have private test banks. Tejeda-Martinez said he wishes more students knew about the CPO’s test bank since it can help students have an upper hand in their classes.
Brian Goh, a business economics alumnus who graduated in 2021, wrote in an emailed statement that the CPO test bank was very helpful for Political Science 40: "Introduction to American Politics." His professor in the class was known to recycle previous exam questions, so he was advised by past students to study old exams, Goh said.
Many professors said they found out about the CPO test bank through their students.
"Some student told me in office hours a couple years ago," said Nicholas Rombes, a former assistant adjunct professor of physics. "I had no idea."
Professors raised concerns about how they can write fair tests when students have access to prior exams. Ecology and evolutionary biology lecturer Leryn Gorlitsky noted that creating a fair test that rewards students who studied the material is very challenging. If certain students have access to a portion of the questions beforehand, it disrupts this balance.
"You start making harder and harder and harder tests because you keep thinking, ‘Oh, this is too easy for the students,’" Gorlitsky said. "But that's not really what's going on. What’s going on is that certain students are having an unfair advantage."
Greg Bryant, chair of the Department of Communication, added that test banks make it harder for professors to create new questions and encourage students to memorize answers, rather than learn the material.
"I think it's part of that problem of the students worrying a lot about their grades, which you know, is a bigger problem that's beyond the test banks," Bryant said.
The CPO maintains a list of excluded professors whose materials cannot be submitted to the test bank, offering a potential solution for concerned faculty. To join the list, a professor must directly contact the CPO and express that they do not want their course material distributed.
After discovering the test bank, Rombes did not ask for his materials to be removed. He said he believes that test banks serve as a good place to store practice questions, saving him the administrative work of posting his old exams.
Bryant also learned that his tests were in the CPO test bank from his students, but had a different reaction.
"As soon as I found out it existed, I did what I could to get it to not be the case for my classes," Bryant said. "And I told other faculty. Many of them didn't know that it existed either."
In 2013, the Academic Senate’s Executive Board recommended "that the CPO issue an annual communication to all UCLA faculty informing them of the test bank, how it is used, and how they may opt out," Cattelino said in an emailed statement. The board also recommended that the CPO notify faculty when their tests are submitted to the bank and provide them the opportunity to have their test removed. According to Cattelino, the CPO is still making efforts to accommodate faculty a decade later.
In an emailed statement, the CPO wrote that "providing individual names of instructors could unintentionally undermine the Test Bank’s success, as it may have the effect of discouraging faculty participation in this program."
Citing the CPO’s test bank as its inspiration, the Alumni Scholars Club operates its own test bank.
The ASC is a university-run organization in which alumni select high-performing freshmen and transfers to receive scholarships along with career and academic development opportunities.
The ASC’s website states that scholars can view the virtual test bank from anywhere with no time limitations. In order to gain access to the test bank, students must submit either a class syllabus, notes or an exam. Additionally, contributing to the test bank can earn scholars up to two-thirds of their mandatory service hours.
While the ASC’s website says that the test bank is only for members, Maddy Barron, an ASC coordinator whose committee oversees the test bank, said that nonmembers can access the test bank if they know someone on her committee and submit an assignment.
"I wish everybody had access because it’d be a great tool and honestly, just academic wealth for everybody," Barron said. "I don't want to gatekeep stuff like that, but at the same time, ASC is based a lot on merit, which is why we are very proud of the test bank and how we have access to it."
Unlike the CPO, the ASC’s test bank does not restrict which professors it accepts assignments from. However, if an exam clearly says not to be distributed, it will not be accepted, Barron said.
The Daily Bruin found that assignments from at least two professors on the CPO’s "Do Not Distribute" list were in the ASC test bank.
Barron expressed how the ASC’s test bank is a useful community resource that scholars recognize they are privileged to have.
"I definitely have a big vendetta against cheating, so I don't use the test bank a whole lot," Barron said. "One of the main pillars of being in ASC is being hard working and having a good work ethic, so I feel like most members wouldn't use it to explicitly cheat – more so to just give themselves practice."
Student A, an ASC scholar who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation in medical school admissions, said that the ASC test bank has been a valuable study tool for their major-related lower division classes that tend to use similar midterms each quarter.
Student A is also a member of a UCLA Greek life organization. While most of the tests in the ASC test bank are from several years ago, some of the Greek life test banks have material from the previous quarter, allowing them to see what the same professor from the same class included on their exams, Student A said.
In contrast, the CPO test bank is sometimes out-of-date. When Bryant examined one of his class’s materials in the bank, every item he found was almost a decade old.
Private test banks are not ideal because they are not accessible to all students, Student A said. However, if students have access to test banks, Student A believes that students should utilize them to stay on top of their classes and get the best grades possible.
Rombes has similar accessibility concerns about private test banks.
"In the case of (test banks for) fraternities and sororities, it sets up some cultural and financial barriers to success that shouldn't be there, especially not in a public institution like UCLA," Rombes said.
Similar to the ASC, the Regents Scholar Society at UCLA also operates a test bank exclusive to its members, who are the recipients of a selective scholarship. The RSS test bank is advertised on the front page of its website as a perk that scholars are awarded.
Every RSS committee member who was contacted declined to comment.
Student B, a Regents scholar who also requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation in medical school admissions, said they found the RSS test bank to be a helpful source of organic chemistry practice problems.
"I don't think I could have gotten through the class if not for the number of practice problems I did," Student B said.
However, since RSS members have to be high-performing students in order to be accepted as a Regents scholar and remain in the program, Student B believes that it is not fair to have a test bank just for the RSS, given the organization’s close ties to UCLA administration.
"In a frat or sorority, I would understand (having a test bank) – it's a bunch of friends trying to help each other out," Student B said. "Whereas the university shouldn't really try to only help out a select few. I definitely think it’s unfair."
"The Academic Senate is aware of equity considerations regarding private test banks," Cattelino said in an emailed statement. However, Cattelino did not state any plans to address these concerns.
Besides ethical issues, test banks also raise questions about academic dishonesty.
According to section 102.01e of the UCLA Student Conduct Code, "Facilitating academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, knowingly helping another student commit an act of academic dishonesty or publishing assignments, exams or solutions without permission of the instructor." However, UCLA policies describe varying definitions of academic dishonesty.
Rafael Romero, an academic administrator and associate director for the Undergraduate Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, said he believes that test banks enable academic dishonesty if the student willfully accesses prior exams knowing that the professor will reuse those exact questions. However, if the university provides test banks, students could easily assume they are acceptable study tools.
"The lack of instructor knowledge/consent at a minimum creates an unethical situation, but with the specific wording of the student code, it might even be directly stumbling into academic dishonesty territory," Romero said in an emailed statement.
Beyond the academic dishonesty debate, professors also question whether university-run test banks violate a professor’s intellectual property. Mark Jepson, a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, initially thought that the CPO would ask for his permission before accepting material from his classes but found he had to be proactive and contact the CPO himself to get his assignments removed.
"Technically speaking, those exams and those questions are my intellectual property, and they were being used without my consent," Jepson said.
According to Martin Brennan, a UCLA scholarly communication education librarian, the UC Policy Ownership of Course Materials states that copyright ownership protects course materials created by professors.
The UCLA Office of Legal Services declined to comment on what rights the university has to distribute a professor’s exams and assignments into test banks.
Goh provided a student’s perspective.
"As long as the tests were not stolen from the professors, there should be no ethical concerns about sharing the materials around, as by returning the tests to students the professors were opening up the opportunity for such sharing in the first place," Goh said.
The recent rise of online exams, initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has allowed more students to access exams after taking them, making it harder for professors to control where they are shared, Bryant said.
Despite sharing many of the same ethical and legal concerns, professors disagree on whether test banks should be allowed on campus.
Ideally, there would be no test banks and professors would have control over the materials their students use to prepare for the exam, Bryant said. He believes a good professor will guide their students on how to study and what to focus on, making test banks unnecessary.
Daniel Lowenstein, professor emeritus of law and director of the UCLA Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions, said he believes test banks should be kept open if they are equally available to all students. Given that students are encouraged to take practice tests for college admissions standardized exams, it makes sense for students to also seek practice material in college, Lowenstein said.
"To the extent that it is an advantage to see them, why in the world should that advantage go to some students and not others?" Lowenstein said.
Similar to Lowenstein’s suggestion, UC Berkeley’s engineering honors society, Tau Beta Pi, manages an online Exam and Syllabus Database categorized by subject, professor, exam type and year available to all students.
Romero suggests involving faculty in the creation of a new test bank. Allowing professors to release example questions or old exams that are representative of their question style would reduce the ethical complexities surrounding UCLA’s test banks, he said.
"That to me would be the ideal test bank where you definitely couldn't argue there's any cheating of any sorts," Romero said. "Students would have an actual tool, and faculty would know exactly what's out there for their classes."