The Graduate Management Admission Council has canceled the scores of 84 people who paid to get a sneak peek at questions on a standardized test for admission to graduate business schools, the council announced today.

The council, which owns and administers the Graduate Management Admission Test, found that 12 people had posted live questions from the test on a Web site called ScoreTop.com. Those students will be barred from taking the test for at least three years.

The other 72 posted messages on the now-defunct ScoreTop Web site that confirmed that their tests had included questions they had seen in advance on the site. Those students will be allowed to retake the test. The council also notified the business schools to which the students had applied.

In June the council was awarded $2.3-million in damages, plus other fees, after suing ScoreTop for copyright infringement. That judgment also gave the council ownership of the ScoreTop domain name and a computer hard drive that it scoured as part of its investigation.

“We take the action of canceling scores very seriously, with a full understanding of our ethical responsibility to both students and schools to protect the integrity of the test and the application process,” said David A. Wilson, president of the council. —Katherine Mangan