People seeking to gain admission to the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) for the upcoming academic year will have to sit a second in-person entrance exam after the integrity of the first exams — the first ever held online — was undermined by test-takers’ alleged use of artificial intelligence and other cheating methods.
A group of experts in fields including education, AI and law that was named by UNAM rector Leonardo Lomelí Vanegas to examine what happened during the initial online exams recommended that new exams be held. UNAM heeded that advice.
Inside the massive cheating scandal shaking UNAM, Mexico’s top university
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the university — Mexico’s largest and most prestigious — outlined the “procedure to participate in the in-person control exam as part of the selection contest to enter degree programs for the 2026/2027 academic year.”
UNAM directed aspirants to a website where they can check whether their score in their initial online exam was sufficiently high to allow them to sit a second in-person exam. If an aspirant’s score met the threshold for the course to which they applied, starting this Friday they can register to sit a second in‑person exam, which will be held between Aug. 12 and 19.
Around 58,000 would-be UNAM students among an initial cohort of more than 158,000 test-takers are expected to qualify for a second in-person exam. Among them are presumably a significant number of people who cheated on their first online entrance exam. A small number of students have applied for injunctions against the nullification of the results of the first exam, but as of 2 p.m. on Wednesday, their requests had not been granted.
Raúl Rojas, a professor of mathematics, AI and statistics, told NPR last week that his conclusion was that “almost half of the students were cheating when taking the exam online.”
Suspicions that a large number of aspirants cheated by using AI arose shortly after UNAM published the results of the initial exams on July 17 because the results were unusually good.
As Mexico News Daily reported last week, the software for the exams was provided by the Mexican company Territorium Life and included in-built features designed to prevent cheating. However, none of the software’s in-built features could physically stop people from using a second computer or a smartphone while sitting their UNAM entrance exams, although it was equipped with a camera and microphone-assisted surveillance system designed to detect irregular — i.e., deceitful — conduct. Many test-takers are alleged to have successfully evaded detection by that system when cheating.
In its statement, UNAM said that “in-person control” exams will be held in León, Guanajuato on Aug. 12 and 13; in Oaxaca city on Aug. 13; in Tijuana, Baja California, on Aug. 15 and 16; and in Mexico City on Aug. 17,18 and 19.
UNAM’s main campus, University City, is located in southern Mexico City, but the university also has campuses in other parts of the country, including México state, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Yucatán. First-year students are scheduled to begin classes on Aug. 31, two weeks after returning students start their new academic year.
With reports from El Universal
