Have you ever cheated on an exam and got away with it? Back in the day, students had to get creative with strategies toward beating the system. You know, like writing the answers on your leg. But now with technology at our fingertips it seems easier to achieve a forbidden ‘A’. Smart phones, watches, and calculators are a cheaters gift to answers, but is it worth it?
AskReddit opened up for questions, asking, “What’s the best/worst attempt at cheating you’ve seen during a test?”
And these cheaters really get creative. Can you say, nail art??
14. Try and focus
I had a spelling test in the third grade. We were told to spell the word “focus” and at the time I was using a Focus brand pencil with the brand name along the side of it. Thought I was going to jail for sure.
13. The disappearing cheat
I have dermotographia. It is a rare skin disease, harmless, but sometimes annoying. Basically that everything i scratch into my skin stays for around 15 minutes before fading. One time we had a substitute teacher so i wrote down some answers for the test. He busted me, but i just denied that it was there. By the time the principle came along it had all disappeared
12. Cheaters are creative
My favorite is still the student who noticed that the syllabus allowed for a “3×5 crib sheet” and didn’t mention any units, so she created a 3 foot by five foot poster will all her notes on it. The professor let it stand because she was right, he hadn’t specified 3×5 inches.
11. Sharing is caring
We had to make a math test on our laptop. All other programs needed to be closed and there were 2 teachers surveilling.
My classmate installed some program so his friend could take over his computer without it being obvious. The classmate scribbled on his paper like he was doing the math and his friend looked up the answers and filled them in. When one of the surveilling teachers neared my classmate would move his cursor so his friend would know not to fill in the answer until he moved his cursor again.
My man won the game. He got an A.
10. An F for the teacher
I had a teacher once who just didn’t give a shit. One day we had an exam where he was the supervisor, and some student asked him something about a question. He didn’t know the answer, so he just asked the rest of the class to give the right answer. After that, he just asked us to tell the following couple of answers as well, so that we all could go home earlier, as he had more stuff to do.
9. If you’re gonna cheat, have a solid alibi
College professor told us about a kid who came in to his office crying the week of finals and telling him about how his grandparents were killed in a car accident and he wouldn’t be able to take the final because the funeral was on the same day. Professor was a nice dude – he consoles this kid and tries to cheer him up and tells him not to worry about the final. A little later in the day, the professor is feeling bad and decides to try to get in touch with the guys parents to offer his condolences. He calls the parents, who have no clue what he’s talking about.
Professor ended up calling the kid back to his office and calling student affairs up right then and there to report him for cheating. I believe the kid made a zero on the final
8. Digestible evidence
A kid hid a sticky note in the top of his mechanical pencil and pulled it out when the teacher wasn’t looking, after he was done with the test he ate it.
7. Digit-al morse code
Basically the whole school knew of this method; I think it was developed over the years and passed on by older siblings/friends. Surely the teachers must’ve known, but it’s hard to catch.
On a multiple choice quiz with A, B, C or D for answers, kids would gently rest or tap fingers on the desk to represent the answer, you know as if they are just pondering. One finger for A, two for B, three for C and four for D. Then was a system to say which question you were asking for, which was to grab, pull, stretch or crack your fingers. Fist closed or complete open was 0, left thumb to pinky was 1-5, right thumb to pinky was 6-10, but 10 was ignored. You’d do the first digit twice and the second once.
6. The not-so-smart smart watch
I was told about a kid in my nieces nursing program. Kid had a smart watch where he could access data from his phone. Prior to the tests he’d put all of the data he needed where he could scroll through it on his watch.
During the final the Teacher asked for all phones to be turned off or you’ll get a failing grade. Someone was texting the kid during the exam, the watch the started making noises and the teacher realized he has been cheating all semester long.
5. Momma’s got your back
not sure if it counts as worst cause the teacher didn’t catch me but I texted my mother two of the questions that had me stumped on a test. She surprisingly sent the answers back and I was good. She wasn’t mad cause I was in college and that class was hard as balls. She’s a cool momma.
4. Visual aids
In the second grade I had a spelling pre-test and the word was “weather.” There was a poster in the classroom with that word on it but she was staring at the class so hard that I didn’t want to turn my head. Before she moved onto the next word, she sneezed and in that moment I thought I broke my neck from turning my head so fast back and forth. I may even have done a total 360 with my head I don’t even know, it happened so fast.
3. Nail art at its best
The best was this girl had equations painted on her nails with such detail they had all you needed for the test. I even snuck a few looks at her nails when I was stumped. The worst I’d would say my classmate was using his phone and it was very clear by the glow on his face. Teacher was not pleased.
2. This is meta-macro
A friend of mine in math class somehow got ahold of the answer key for the final exam. He then programmed the entire test into his TI-83. Now, the teachers suspected that people would cheat, so they made us clear the memory before the test. This guy saw through that and developed a macro by which the normal memclear command could be pushed through, but he wouldn’t lose his exam answers. Oh, he even threw a random generator in there that would toss in a few random incorrect answers, so it wouldn’t actually look like you were just copy/pasting the answers.
1. Smart teacher, bad student
A kid had written test answers on his leg so he could pull up his pant leg during our history test to cheat. Apparently he was writing them in front of a different teacher, who of course told the teacher who was testing. Before we walked into the classroom, our history teacher announced that we’d be doing a quick reenactment of soldiers in the Vietnam war and asked us all to roll up our pants to “wade through the swamps”. The kids plan was instantly exposed.
These are beyond inventive! Today’s teaching staff are forced to stay on their toes.
But it poses the question, if you don’t get caught, did you really cheat?
You decide and share your story below!
