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Hacking Into Harvard Case Summary

Better Essays

Case Study 2: Hacking into Harvard
Naugie Pratt
Unit 2
October 2, 2012

Case Study 2: Hacking into Harvard
Summary of Events:
This case involves students who have applied to MBA programs, who stumbled across an opportunity to learn of their results early, information that had been obtained via message board. Anyone who has ever applied for admission to a prestigious college, or who has been interview for a desired job knows the feeling of playing the “wait game”. However in this case, applicants waiting for the results of application and interviews into MBA programs offered at –Harvard, Dartmouth, Duke, Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Stanford were able to take a glimpse of whether their destiny has been fulfilled or not. While …show more content…

But if the website was so restricted, than why was it so easy for me to find out the outcome of my results, and why did it take so long for the programmers at “Apply Yourself” to figure out what went wrong. This decision is solely based off my curious mind, my anxiety to thinking, or rather yet believing that this is what I was supposed to do, rather than testing my judgment and integrity. 2. Assess the morality of what the curious applicants did from the point of view of egoism, utilitarianism, Kant’ ethics, Ross’ pluralism, and rule utilitarianism.
Egoism
The applicants are morally correct as long as their action promotes their long term interest. If their action produces or will produce for them a greater outcome of good, versus evil in the long hall than any other alternative, than that action is the right one to act on, and the individual should take that to be a moral act. An Assessment of Morality by Ethicsinbusiness.net
I believe that in terms of egoism, the applicants were action morally. The applicant simply followed instructions on a web page, logged in with their personal username and password, and was, able to view their results. The term “hack” to me is a bit evasive; the applicants did not view the results of their peers, but of their own. Learning of their results early may or may not affect their long term interests. An Assessment of Morality by Ethicsinbusiness.net
Even though the applicants chose to let their curious mind to get

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