University Orders 58,000 Students to Retake Exam After AI Failure

Thousands of students hoping to join Mexico’s largest university, UNAM, are facing an unexpected challenge. Following a failed remote testing process earlier this summer, the university has announced that 58,000 applicants must sit for a new, in-person exam. This decision comes after an investigation revealed that the AI-powered software used to monitor students during the original test did not work correctly.

Earlier this year, nearly 160,000 people took the UNAM entrance exam from their own homes. To prevent cheating, the university used a special web browser and software that used artificial intelligence to watch students through their webcams. This was the first time the school had used such technology for the entire process. However, when the results were released, they were very different from what the school had seen in the past.

According to Ars Technica, the number of students achieving top scores rose sharply. Between 2021 and 2025, only about 3.5 percent of students scored 100 or more on the 120-question test. This year, that number jumped to 16.3 percent. The results were even more unusual at the very top level, where the percentage of students scoring 110 or higher increased significantly compared to previous years. These strange results led to widespread accusations that students had cheated during the remote exam.

In response to these concerns, UNAM created a special group of experts to investigate the situation. This group, which included many professionals, recently finished its report. They concluded that the only way to make sure the process was fair was to hold a new test. This is known as a “control exam”—a test used to check or confirm the results of a previous one. The university decided that all students who were originally accepted based on their scores must now prove their knowledge again in person.

This is a difficult situation for many young people. The university rector, who is the head of the school, has publicly apologized to the students who studied hard and did not cheat. He noted that it is unfair to make honest students take the test again. However, he explained that the new exam is necessary to give certainty and guarantee equity, which means fairness and equal opportunity for everyone, in the university’s admission process.

This update follows earlier reports that the remote exam system had failed to provide reliable results. The university is now working quickly to organize the new testing schedule. With classes originally set to begin on August 10, the school faces a very tight deadline to complete the testing and finalize the list of new students. It remains unclear if the start date for the new school year will be delayed to accommodate this change.

This event highlights the risks of moving important exams to remote, AI-supervised systems. While technology can sometimes make processes easier, it can also create new problems if the systems are not fully tested or secure. For now, the students of UNAM must prepare for one more test, hoping that this time, the process will be fair and accurate for everyone involved. The university has promised to provide more details about the upcoming control exam soon, as thousands of families wait to hear how this will affect their future education.