I have nothing to say about profiling individuals but cheating appears to be a huge issue among international students. Per the WSJ [0]:

    Public universities in the U.S. recorded 5.1 reports of alleged cheating for every 100 international students, versus one report per 100 domestic students

Faculty singled out Chinese students in particular.

[0]: http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-m...

I live in China. I have not made any effort to learn about plagiarism or impersonating people at exams in the four years I've been here. I know one Chinese person who sat an English language proficiency exam for her cousin, another whose Bachelor's thesis was almost entirely plagiarised. I met a Canadian guy who did a Master's degree in econometrics at Tsinghua (top 3 university in China). Apparently plagiarism was rampant.

On a more anecdotal level one of my fiancee's friends was dating a guy who sold SAT answers for a while.

I have a couple of friends who teach at international high schools here in Shanghai. It takes quite a long time to get through to the students that plagiarism is not okay and is taken seriously.

By the way no one brought up race in this thread until you did.

That's interesting - I'm surprised to hear so many first hand accounts.

If it is widespread it's especially unfortunate considering there's already some controversy around the high numbers of asian applicants.

Btw, I only mention race because it is a central topic of the article.

I'm sure others were cheating as well, but it wasn't as blatantly obvious as with those Chinese who didn't even speak English. So I'd say being fluent in English is a good way to avoid being profiled this way.