EXCEL, Red-handed on the March 2009 ECE Board Exam Leakage?

An alleged exam leakage was reported days after the Electronics Engineering (ECE) Board Exam held on March 28 and 29, 2009. The said examinees who exposed this issue were asking for a re-take and protested that EXCEL review center disseminated review materials that according to them were exact replica of the exam.

I was also once an ECE reviewee and enrolled at PERCdc, one great competitor of EXCEL. These two review centers, by the way are two of the most popular in Sampaloc, Manila when it comes to ECE review. So I suggest you review on these two to get the best of both worlds. During my stay then, students reviewing from EXCEL always bragged about their "closed-door" review, that according to them will never de discussed in any other review centers. The session was so strict that students were asked to leave their cellphones and were not allowed to bring any items even the smallest piece of paper. And since we have friends there, we were fortunate enough to have an idea on what are these items that were being discussed on that "closed-door" thingy.

Actually, I am quite positive that the items they have discussed during our time were not really exam leakage. Review centers do perform cycle study of the exam. When I say cycle study, review schools have these research teams that perform in-depth sudy of past exams. Also every bit of resources, from the covered area up to the points to study is legally provided by the examiners prior to the exam, like what books do the examiners use in preparing the exam, and the like. Therefore, since they have studied the previous exams, there is a great possibility of predicting the questions that might appear on the next exam.

By the way, for your information, it is illegal to disclose the exam content as a part of the pledge that examinees have to agree on before the exam. So, where do they get the copies of the previous exams? According to my know-how, they get these information from their previous students, who somehow contribute to the review centers by recalling as many questions as they can. Quite complicated, right? Well, that's what I know and what I hear from my other colleagues.

However on this issue, they were saying that the review materials that were distributed by EXCEL were exact copies of the board exam. If that is so, I really can't attest whether this issue can be saved by the conclusion that I provided. But I guess that's basically my simplest explanation on why review centers can provide questions similar to the actual exam.