Colleges need to recognize what they are doing to students, who must go to extremes to land above the rest. While impaction in universities contributes to the fierce competition, application data requirements need not be based on strict datum that determines a student’s acceptance. In this fashion comes the problem: colleges create cheaters.

While cheating can occur with or without motive, a staggering change has taken place over the last 30 years. Harry Bruinius in The Christian Science Monitor compares the growing problem to an athlete taking steroids. He writes, “In the past, students who worried about failing would resort to crib notes. Now, even the best and brightest are trying to get an edge.”

According to familyeducation.com, 7 in 10 students admitted cheating on a test at least once in the past year. George Mason University’s student newspaper reported in December that “cases of cheating and plagiarism have nearly quadrupled in the last five years.”

The direct correlation between colleges’ extreme demands and the rise in cheating is apparent. The desperation amongst students grows little by little. A student in need of sleep can’t remember that one tough vocab term, so he jots it down on his hand. No big deal, right?

One wrong act leads to another and after you’ve come so far with perfect records and marks you figure, why not just go a little further? This is the test that could make or break your acceptance into that college! Before you know it, you look back at all your wrongdoings and you can’t even see where you started.

Cheating can never be justified. But with all this pressure, the college experience can blur our line of doing the wrong for the inevitable right. The never-ending competition among rank and SAT/ACT scores is found in every high school now, and while it is understandable to make decisions on these scores, colleges need to tone down their apparent obsession with performance.

Until these institutions work to curtail their demand for ‘the best,’ their doors will continue to open to students who have worked their way over a mountain by using an airplane, while leaving out other students who are scaling it the proper way and didn’t get to the other side quite as fast.