Nearly 160,000 applicants took UNAM’s undergraduate entrance exam remotely this summer, the first time Mexico’s largest university ran the test entirely online using a lockdown browser and AI-powered webcam proctoring. When results came in, top scores had surged by roughly fivefold compared with the previous five years, and roughly 58,000 students have now been told they must sit a new in-person exam before their admission is confirmed.<\/p>\n
UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, ran its licenciatura entrance exam over several weeks from late May through early June, entirely remotely for the first time. Test takers had to install Respondus LockDown Browser and a webcam-based proctoring system from Territorium that used AI algorithms to flag signs of substitution, phones, earphones, or applicants leaving the frame. One human supervisor was assigned for every 150 applicants to follow up on alerts.<\/p>\n
The safeguards did not hold. UNAM canceled nearly 2 percent of total exams for unspecified conduct issues. More tellingly, the score distribution shifted sharply upward. Between 2021 and 2025, 3.5 percent of test takers scored 100 or more on the 120-question test. This year, 16.3 percent did so. At the very top of the range, 0.9 percent of test takers had scored 110 or more in the previous five years; in 2026, 5.5 percent did. A statistical analysis shared with NPR by AI expert Raul Rojas estimated that almost half of the students were cheating during the online test.<\/p>\n
The university appointed a commission called la Comisi\u00f3n T\u00e9cnica de Personas Expertas para la Revisi\u00f3n del Proceso de Selecci\u00f3n de Ingreso a Licenciatura para el Ciclo Escolar 2026-2027\/1 to investigate the irregularities. The commission concluded that the only way to restore confidence in the result is a new in-person "control exam."<\/p>\n
That retest will not only cover applicants who earned a spot on the strength of the 2026 test. It also applies to anyone who would have been admitted on the basis of minimum successful scores in their program of study since 2021, since the prior years are being used as a baseline for what a normal distribution looks like. About 58,000 people could be affected, and their places at UNAM will now depend on the new in-person results.<\/p>\n
According to Gaceta UNAM, the rector has apologized to honest applicants who will have to prepare for and take the test again through no fault of their own, while describing the retest as "necessary to give certainty and guarantee equity in access." Details on the control exam had not been published at the time of the report, and the fall semester is currently scheduled to begin on August 10, leaving the university with a narrow window unless it postpones the start of classes.<\/p>\n
The exact methods used are not yet known. The 2026 exam was multiple choice rather than essay-based, which makes the usual telltale signs of AI cheating, such as complete answers being pasted into text boxes, harder to detect. UNAM has acknowledged "the probability that a significant number of applicants may have received help" on the test.<\/p>\n
Reporting described a range of traditional and AI-assisted tactics that were already circulating before the exam window opened. Tips circulating online advised students to position monitors outside the webcam frame so they could read from ChatGPT or other AI models, to hide earphones under their hair, or to pay someone else to take the exam out of camera view. Pre-leaked questions and physical cheat sheets have not been ruled out.<\/p>\n
UNAM combined two commercial products. Respondus LockDown Browser is designed to stop students from printing, copying, visiting other web addresses, opening other applications, web searching, instant messaging, minimizing the browser, and hundreds of other functions while an exam is running, returning the computer to its normal state only after the test ends. Territorium’s proctoring layer added AI-driven webcam analysis, with a human supervisor reviewing the alerts the system raised.<\/p>\n
Neither layer appears to have matched the threat. Cheating that relied on a second device or a hidden person, the exact kinds of behaviors visible to a webcam, went apparently undetected at scale. A monitoring system that flags suspicious behavior after the fact still cannot stop a test taker from reading answers off a screen just outside the camera’s view, which is consistent with the jump in top scores and Rojas’s estimate.<\/p>\n
All affected applicants will sit a new, in-person exam under human proctoring. The university’s commission has made the retest the central recommendation of its report, on the grounds that a clean result is the only way to fairly compare this year’s applicants with prior cohorts. The rector’s framing in Gaceta UNAM, that the move is about certainty and equity in access rather than punishment, signals that the retest will be used to determine who actually enters UNAM for the 2026-2027 cycle.<\/p>\n
The decision also resets the baseline for future years, since the 2026 distribution can no longer be treated as a reference point. For applicants, the practical effect is immediate: prepare for another high-stakes test on short notice, with no guarantee that the August 10 start of classes will hold.<\/p>\n
UNAM’s 2026 entrance exam was run entirely online with AI webcam proctoring for the first time, and top scores jumped to about five times their usual level. An expert commission concluded that widespread cheating could not be ruled out, so the university will require a new in-person "control exam" for anyone whose admission depends on the 2026 test, affecting roughly 58,000 people.<\/p>\n
Applicants were required to install Respondus LockDown Browser, which blocks printing, copying, web browsing, messaging, and most other computer functions during the test. UNAM also used Territorium’s AI-driven webcam proctoring, monitored by one human supervisor per 150 test takers, to flag suspicious behavior such as substitution, phones, or earphones.<\/p>\n
Between 2021 and 2025, 3.5 percent of test takers scored 100 or more on the 120-question exam and 0.9 percent scored 110 or more. In 2026, 16.3 percent scored 100 or more and 5.5 percent scored 110 or more, which is the gap that triggered the cheating investigation and the decision to retest.<\/p>\n