Recent students who took the GMAT are fearful about their academic future due to illegal prep help from Topscore.com.

For those of us who haven't yet given much thought to grad school, the GMAT is another standardized test for students planning to get their MBA. Think of it as the business SAT, the gatekeeper to many graduate business programs.

Topscore.com, a popular test prep site, was recently sued and shut down by GMAC (the guys who own GMAT) due to the site's "live GMAT questions." As the story goes, Topscore hired recent GMAT takers to rack their brains and recall questions from the test. The site then offered this information to members who paid a subscription fee.

With the questions being "live," Topscore subscribers were more likely to come across a familiar sight when they took the actual test. Talk about getting some real help.

But did these students know they were walking a fine line of legality? Most of those interviewed claimed they didn't, that they just wanted to prepare best they could.

Putting myself in their shoes, I wouldn't care if questions came from GMATs taken 5 minutes ago or from a Power Rangers cereal box coupon code as long as it would help me get into the business school I sought most.

So, what gives?

GMAC has already laid the hammer down on Topscore – no surprise there. But the real question is what will happen to the students who accessed, and benefitted from, the hot-off-the-presses questions?

As it stands, GMAC scourged Topscore's databases to find information on all the "guilty" subscribers and is currently weighing its options. But hold the phone… how can GMAC discern which students knowingly accessed illegal information and which just wanted more help?

The punishment for those found guilty can range from canceled scores (and thus, the need to retake the test) to being blacklisted. The latter would, in effect, prevent these students from attending business school.

Tough lessons, but ultimately, for the rest of us, lesson learned.

There are tons of prep schools, books, and Web sites out there to guide you toward a better score on standardized tests. But before you jump in, be sure to check sources, disclaimers and terms of use. At Cramster.com, even though we don't deal with standardized test prep, we do help you prepare for other exams, and we let you know that we take learning seriously. Any skepticism about our intentions can be wiped away by reading our anti-cheating policy.

We frown upon what Topscore did, but the jury's out on whether the students were guilty. Here's to the true story coming out.

So what do you think? How should the GMAT "cheaters" be punished, if at all? How would you resolve this situation?

Some students go to great – and often curious – lengths to maximize their studying time before finals.

As I approach the end of my third year in college and thus my sixth round of finals, I'm confident I've seen it all when it comes to crazy, odd or just plain absurd study methods.

Well, almost all.

I'm sure some of you fellow Cramster members out there have some interesting stories.

There was the kid across the hall freshman year who Aderol'ed himself into a 36-hour sleepless stupor. Don't take Aderol… just don't.

Then there's the classic (and much more popular) I'm-going-to-go-to-sleep-at-4-and-wake-up-at-5 method that is meant to secure some semblance of sanity.

There are the library residents, the library frequenters, the casual library users and the kids who enjoy studying outside right next to the library.

And of course you can't forget the kids who never venture near the library in favor of blasting rock music and pacing around the room as some hypnotic memorization strategy.

I told you I'd seen a lot of weird things.

But this post is about what you've seen – I'm sure there are some crazy stories out there, so please share them with us so we can get a good laugh in while taking a break from our studies.

What off-the-wall study methods have you seen or taken part in? Have you ever tried any crazy methods with surprising results?

Gotta love stop days.

Including the preceding or ensuing weekend, stop days give every college student a chance to catch his or her breath and relax for at least a few days before final exams begin.

But just like normal school days, in which you are often scrambling to complete 10 different activities while still finding time to study, there is an art to maximizing your stop days.

So without further ado, here are five suggestions to keep in mind as you near those glorious few open dates on the calendar.

1. Don't study for at least two days. This one is self explanatory. You miss out on the whole idea of stop days if you plow through them buried in a textbook. Don't worry – you'll still have time to get your required amount of studying in before your first test. Cramming four days before the test is the first indication of Laymen's Acute Memory Evaporation, or LAME for short.

2. Sleep in. I know what you're thinking. If you get up at 9 a.m. and study for five hours, you then have the entire afternoon and evening free. Don't do it. Trust me, if you set your alarm for 9 a.m., one of two things will happen: You wake up in a terrible mood or you reset your alarm for noon. Sleep in now so you can pull late nighters in the future without suffering during the following day's test.

3. Go on a mini adventure. Face it: In the not-so-distant future, you will be spending ten hours a day studying, four hours a day wasting time while trying to get your mind off studying, and at least another two hours doing what you think is studying but is really nothing more than skillful daydreaming. Take advantage of stop days and go do something adventurous to escape the campus bubble. You'll be more productive as a result once you hit the books.

4. Exercise. I don't know exactly how you'll feel after your finals are over, but I do know how you won't feel – fit. Work out during stop days so that once you become the academic version of a couch potato you don't start to resemble an actual one.

5. Utilize Cramster. Eventually you will have to hit the books. Just make sure it's near the end of stop days. Running through practice problems here allows you to see the logic behind the complicated language and equations. But you knew that already.

Any tips I left out? How do you best utilize your stop days?

Why relying too heavily on practice tests can have an adverse effect on your actual test performance.

As I wrote in my last entry, taking practice tests is the best way to study. However, there is one major pitfall that all avid practice test takers must avoid; we'll call it the "one trick pony syndrome." The point of practice tests is to ensure that you can apply what you learned in class to paper, to ensure that you aren't the guy with a 50-inch vertical who can't make a shot to save his life.

The point is not to bond yourself to the practice test to the point where switching numbers will result in temporary brain paralysis.

Many students will run through the teacher-provided practice test five, ten or even twenty times as their only form of studying. Doing this can easily result in an inability to solve questions with slight modifications. Sure, knowing the steps to solve problems may be more important when taking a test than knowing the theory behind the steps, but don't put all your eggs in one basket.

"Man, you sure can ace that practice test… but can you do anything else?"

Don't be that guy. Know the methods to solve test questions but also understand why step A leads to step B. Two-story houses need a staircase. Trust me.

Ever fallen into the practice test trap? Any thoughts on strategies to avoid the trap?

Why practice tests should be the first and last step in the studying process.

I'm sure you've all seen the bumper stickers or posters that read, "I'd rather be fishing." If I were to stick one of these on my car I'd supplant fishing with golfing. You might choose "singing," "eating" or "grooming my chia pet." Regardless of what activity you'd rather be doing, it's pretty safe to say that activity isn't studying.

Whether or not you consciously ask yourself before hitting the books, the paramount question when studying is "How can I maximize the time I spend doing this?" Or, in other words, it's all about efficiency, baby.

In my humble opinion it all starts and ends with the practice test. When you sit down to study, you have a good idea of where your strengths and weaknesses lie, but that doesn't mean you should head straight to your notes to solidify what's lacking. Start by taking a practice test (usually provided by your professor, textbook publisher or frat brothers).

You may realize that while you find the material on circuits to be hazy, the test questions on circuits all progress similarly. Spending a short amount of time with the method employed to solve these questions will get you to where you need to be. Think of it as inductive versus deductive studying.

So start with the practice test, understand what you need to focus on, do what's necessary to grasp that material, then take a second practice test (or even re-take the first one). If you can complete all of the problems without assistance or peeking at the solution page, you are good to go. If a certain problem still trips you up, repeat steps 2-4. Consider yourself enrolled in the Brian McKnight school of studying.

Just make sure you don't fall victim to the practice test trap.

Are practice tests your go-to guy for studying? On the contrary, think they are overrated? Share your thoughts!