The University of California, Los Angeles' Access Program, an umbrella group of life science departments, will require face-to-face interviews with foreign applicants before offering them admission, program officials announced last week. The new policy, the first of its kind to be publicized, will apply to all foreign applicants but according to university officials, applications from China are considered particularly problematic.

Last spring, Access administrators discovered that a Chinese student already accepted into the program had submitted a fraudulent transcript. After offering the student a place in an entering class, the admissions committee received an anonymous e-mail tip that the stamps on the transcript, meant to indicate authenticity, had been faked.

The e-mail contained enough correct information that the committee deemed it credible, said David Meyer, professor of biochemistry and associate dean of basic science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Access program, in an interview with The Scientist. After procuring a transcript directly from the Chinese university showing that the student had not taken several courses he claimed to have taken, UCLA withdrew its offer.

Verifying information from Chinese officials isn't always so easy, and the problem goes beyond transcripts according to admissions officers. Letters of recommendation can be difficult to authenticate too, said John Godfrey, assistant dean for International Education at the University of Michigan's Rackham Graduate School. "When we receive word that someone may have forged an application, we send all the materials — transcript and letters — to the home institution for verification. It's not unusual for us not to get a response."

Adding to their woes, a recent investigation by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE), found that test scores from 40 countries showed a suspicious pattern in the Far East, indicating that test questions and answers were being shared. ETS notified university admissions officials earlier this year that some GRE scores from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea may not be valid.

Adam Bailis, associate professor of molecular biology at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope medical center in Los Angeles and a member of its graduate admissions committee, said that in his experience GRE scores from Chinese applicants are not predictive. "The scores are pretty much uniformly outstanding, while the students' performance in our classes and afterwards is not."

Chinese students are the largest group of foreign students in the United States today, according to the Institute of International Education. Close to 60,000 Chinese students were enrolled in the 2000–2001 academic year, the majority in graduate programs. In some science departments, upwards of 80% of the applicants are from China.

Estimates of the actual incidence of fraud among Chinese applicants are hard to come by, but the problem concerns Chinese officials as well. Between 2001 and 2002, a government verification program discovered widespread diploma fraud. In one province, 800 of 3,500 college certificates were bogus.

Victor Zhenyu Liu, president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at UCLA, acknowledged that transcript fraud is a serious problem, and that a fairer system for evaluating applications is needed. But he noted that most of the thousands of Chinese students in the US are acting well.

Godfrey agreed. "It goes without saying that most of them are wonderful applications, extraordinary students. We're delighted to have them." But, he added, he worries that without adequate mechanisms to guarantee the integrity of the process, it will be difficult for the students and for graduate schools to continue the current trend toward greater internationalization.