Gizmodo: 58,000-student do-over

The National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, has moved from reviewing a disputed admissions process to rerunning part of it. After holding its undergraduate entrance exam fully online for the first time in 2026, the university said applicants whose scores met program cutoffs would have to take an in-person “control exam” that will determine admission. The decision affects roughly 58,000 people out of more than 158,000 test takers and comes days before the academic year is due to begin. UNAM said it acted on the recommendation of a technical commission set up after complaints, statistical anomalies and public protests. ### How did an online entrance exam end up in dispute? UNAM held the exam remotely for the first time between May and June 2026, saying the format was meant to widen access for applicants across Mexico and abroad. The system used a lockdown browser and AI-assisted webcam monitoring that was supposed to flag incidents for human supervisors. (dgcs.unam.mx) Results published on July 17 quickly drew scrutiny. El País reported that unusually high scores appeared in high-demand programs, and Mexico’s deputy education minister Ricardo Villanueva called the results “atypical.” Posts on TikTok and Facebook also circulated showing applicants boasting about near-perfect scores and thanking ChatGPT for helping during the exam, according to El País. (elpais.com) ### What convinced the university that the results could not simply stand? Across the previous five years, 0.9% of test takers scored 110 or higher on the 120-question exam, Gizmodo reported, citing NPR. In this year’s remote exam, that share rose to 5.5%, a jump that helped fuel allegations that the online safeguards had failed. Raúl Rojas, a professor of mathematics, artificial intelligence and statistics, told NPR that his conclusion was that “almost half of the students were cheating” during the online exam, according to Mexico News Daily. (elpais.com) Daniel Hernández Gutiérrez of the Autonomous Metropolitan University told El País that if compromised exams could not be identified from the data collected, the tests would have to be repeated rather than rerun under the same online conditions. (gizmodo.com) ### Why are 58,000 students being called back, not all 158,000? UNAM did not order a blanket retest for every applicant. Instead, it said those whose online scores met the minimum threshold for the program, academic unit and modality they chose would be eligible — and required — to sit the in-person control exam. Mexico News Daily said that group is expected to total about 58,000 people. UNAM had already voided about 2% of the original exams — roughly 3,000 out of 158,712 presented — before the broader controversy escalated, according to El País. (mexiconewsdaily.com) The larger problem was that the university and outside experts said the remaining data no longer gave enough certainty about which high scores reflected legitimate performance and which did not. (dgcs.unam.mx) ### What exactly failed in the anti-cheating setup? Respondus provided the lockdown browser used in the exam, while Mexican company Territorium supplied the AI proctoring system that monitored candidates through webcams, according to Gizmodo and Mexico News Daily. The tools could restrict what happened on the test device and watch for suspicious behavior, but they could not physically prevent someone from consulting a second computer or a phone off camera. (elpais.com) Juan Manuel Flores Ayala, an education monitoring and evaluation specialist, told El País the case could set legal, technological and educational precedents because the university had to choose between validating a tainted process or redoing a high-stakes exam under pressure. That pressure was visible at protests on UNAM’s Mexico City campus, where demonstrators chanted, “We demand honesty, not artificial intelligence,” according to Gizmodo. (gizmodo.com) ### What happens next for applicants? UNAM said on August 4 that applicants can begin checking the admissions microsite from August 5 for cutoff lists and, starting Friday, August 7, use their personal login to obtain an appointment for the in-person control exam. The university said those exams will be administered between August 12 and August 19, with details on date, time, venue and required documents provided through the portal. (english.elpais.com) The academic calendar leaves little room for delay. Yahoo’s summary of the case said the semester starts August 10, while El País reported that UNAM had suspended enrollment less than three weeks before the new cycle was due to begin. That means the admissions outcome for tens of thousands of applicants now depends on a second test arranged on an emergency timetable. (yahoo.com) (dgcs.unam.mx)