Uncover the most surprising ways students bend the rules, from learning sign language to hiding papers in the worst places ever or even Morse code! Brace yourself for a peek into the world of ingenious test tactics! Teachers and students are sharing their best encounters with breaking the rules.
1. Taking Advantage
Not my story, but a close friend back from college. He said that in high school, in one of his classes, his teacher was very very deaf/couldn't hear in one ear, and basically was very very good at reading lips.
Come to their first exam of the year, with the teacher standing in the front of the room, kids started to just bow their heads down and literally speak out loud "What is the answer to 12?" etc, softly of course.
Apparently, soon enough there was just constant conversation throughout the whole class regarding most questions.
IIRC he said that soon enough an assistant or another teacher would sit in during tests/quizzes once teaching staff figured it out. I still find it incredibly amusing to picture a class of 40 kids talking during the test with the teacher standing right up front.
rowinginsoup
2. Sneaky Cheating
Had a kid who would raise his hand and say something like "I need help with number 13" or whatever number. (I'm a teacher's assistant).
Either I or the teacher would go over to him and tell him not to speak out loud, and give him whatever help he needed we could give (I work in a special needs school, so sometimes they don't know definitions of words or struggle to get a point across if it's a short answer. )
It took me a few times to realize, but about 20-30 seconds after this student would say that, another would sharpen his pencil manually.
And he would twist the pencil either once (a) twice (b) three times (c) or four (d) so that the other student could hear it (imagine manually sharpening a pencil, that kind of click sound).
The look on both of their faces when I took the sharpener away and told them to stay after class was great. Great way to cheat though.
[deleted]
3. Foggy Windows
Not a teacher, but a story passed on by my father. When he was attending Gymnasium (Germany's equivalent of a grammar school or a publically-funded prep school), history lessons were all about memorizing dates.
The classroom used for history also had one large window, which the history professor usually had his back turned to while speaking to the students. This large window behind the history teacher would fog up in the winter.
On one test day, some students decided to write out entire events and their dates on the window, using their fingers. The history teacher passed out the tests, the windows slowly fogged up, and behold everybody in the class could see the dates on the window.
Except for the professor, whose back was turned to it. Once the tests were collected, the history professor finally turned around and saw the window. All he said was, "That's good."
The professor then graded the papers as normal. He must have seen too many instances of cheating that one finally impressed him.
[deleted]
4. Colors And Answers
Not a teacher but somebody I knew in high school would have her studious boyfriend (who had the same class as she did but earlier in the day) write down all of the answers to multiple-choice tests as he took them.
He would give her the list of answers in between classes and she would draw a colored spiral of blocks on her hand. Each block corresponded to a question, and the color of the block corresponded to the answer.
blueduck577
5. Finding The Unexistent Test
When I was in high school German class, we had a test where I couldn't answer one question. Not a single one. I was normally a good student, but it had been a bad couple of weeks for me. So I never turned it in.
The next day when the old teacher handed them back, I told him that I never got mine. He acted confused and said that it was probably in his office.
The following day he gets to class and says "Thepikey7, I found your test. You got a B"
thepikey7
6. Second Chances
I'm not a teacher, but two former professors of mine -- who coincidentally shared an office -- had GREAT stories. They were both Lit/English profs, so they involved essays.
The first was grading a student's essay and could just sense that something was off. It didn't match the rest of this student's writing. He simply e-mailed the student and asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell him.
No accusation, but the implication was "I know something isn't right here." The student came in at his next office hours and confessed that another student who owed him a favor had written it for him.
Because he had confessed right away, the professor gave him a second chance: Re-do the assignment for half credit and he wouldn't report the student for academic dishonesty.
The student soon handed in a new essay and the professor again sensed that something was wrong. So he did a little Googling. The student had plagiarized from Wikipedia. And not just Wikipedia, but the Wikipedia entry about Wikipedia. He reported the student.
The other professor had a student turn in an essay and, again, his spidey sense was tingling. A lot of the citations and quotes were too perfect. But he did some Googling and maybe TurnItIn and couldn't find any evidence of plagiarism.
In fact, that set him on the right track. The professor went to the library to look for the books and articles the student had listed under "Works Cited" and discovered that they didn't exist. The student had fabricated the whole thing.
He did such a good job at faking the citations, he probably could have done the actual assignment in the same amount of time it took him to invent his sources.
FishyFred
7. Cheating Is Fashionable
So one of my professors was telling my class this story about a Chinese girl who got caught cheating. Apparently, for the exam, the girl wore a skirt covered in Chinese.
Now one of the TAs (who knew Chinese) was wandering through the exam, saw this skirt, and was intrigued by the skirt. However, when he came over, he was able to read the skirt. The girl apparently sewed her class notes (in Chinese) onto her skirt.
[deleted]
8. Ingenious
A professor at my University allows cheating as long as he doesn't catch you, and he says he has seen almost everything so to get away with it, you will have to be very creative.
To drive home his point he tells the story of his friend in college, who used to do leather work and knew braille. He would make a belt before the tests with formulas and notes marked on the belt in braille.
That is the most impressive way of cheating I have ever heard of, it blows notes on a water bottle out of the water.
surnik22
9. He Never Saw That Coming
A friend told me about a teacher who caught a student cheating the other day. What happened - The student broke into her office the night before the exam and stole a copy of the exam.
There was candy on her desk and the idiot student took some of it. The next morning, the teacher noticed some candy was missing and decided to check if anything else was missing.
She of course noticed one of the exams was missing. Instead of canceling the exam, she cut a half inch off each exam paper and passed them out to the class like normal. after they were all turned in, exactly one stuck out and was taller than the rest. Boom. Kicked out of school.
Andy_Dufresne_
10. Wrong Answers
My dad's a prof. When he gives tests to huge classes, he sets the students in seats according to their place alphabetically and distributes multiple forms so that no one sits next to anyone who has the same test, and he can know what test each student will be administered.
Once, when he was grading, he noticed an abnormally low score. Below the statistical guessing rate, even. His general procedure in those cases is to check to make sure that a student didn't accidentally skip a bubble line on the scantron sheet, etc.
Well, this student didn't do that...but the answers were awfully similar to the correct answers in a different form. They were, in fact, identical to the test belonging to the person on the student's right.
So my dad, being a quintessential geek, calculated the chance that the student would guess randomly the exact same as the person to their right (it was somewhere less than one in two million), and included this statistic in his academic integrity violation report.
[deleted]
11. No One Will Ever Know
In 5th grade, we had an economics simulation where we were supposed to learn about having a successful business. We made little goods and had fake money and at the end of the year, we could use the fake money to buy real goods in an auction.
I was bad at it. So I stole one of the stamps used to mark the money, got a date stamp, and proceeded to Xerox fake money which I mixed into the real money. I kept to small bills, didn't make enough to be suspicious, and changed the date stamp to dates that were consistent with the real bills.
I had one accomplice. I told no one else. I wasn't caught. And I got a set of bath gels out of it at the end of the year. Surprisingly, I am now a full-functioning adult and a positive member of society.
bettertopassboldly
12. Pass This To Dave
Not a teacher, but the best cheating story I know. So there were a bunch of kids in my high school who you wouldn't see in any class in the whole semester but they would just turn up for the exam. Everyone knows someone like that in high school.
Anyways, this one kid (let's call him Dave) shows up to an English exam. He somehow gets someone to pretty much do the whole exam for him (essay and everything!) and he somehow manages to have them pass all of the answers to him.
All he has to do is staple the answers to the question sheet and hand it in. So halfway through the exam, he walks up and hands in his work. The teacher takes it, turns it around, and reads aloud 'Pass this to Dave'.
Silence for 3 seconds. The teacher looks right at Dave. Dave looks at the teacher and all he can say is “crap”.
TheOtherCumKing
13. Sneaking Food
In statistics, a friend thought he could sneak in a burrito and eat it by holding it behind a movable closet that was situated against the wall he was sitting near.
When the teacher wasn't looking, he'd bring it out and take a bite. When the teacher was looking his way, he'd discretely hide it behind the closet, and since he was close enough it didn't look suspicious.
The teacher is at the board talking about z-scores and statistical nonsense, and out of nowhere says "...and Cam, throw that burrito out. You know there's no food in my classroom."
It turns out, people have tried to use the closet in the same way in past years, so he set up an unsuspicious mirror in the back (it looked like one you'd see in any classroom) to "spy" on people sneaking food in. Imagine the look on our faces when we thought he could see through walls...
MANGLED_CORPSE_CUNT
14. Cheating Differently
In high school, we were forced to learn a language, German or French. During a French written test (Write a paragraph in French about your holiday to [blahblahblah]).
The teacher left the room for 20 seconds to get something from her office, I kid you not, 75% of the class swapped their papers to something they had pre-wrote before the class.
My pal didn't do this. He cheated by having his paragraph pre-written and between his legs on his chair. All he had to do was look down and re-write it.
Almost everyone who swapped their paper got disqualified for their A4 sheet of paper being different to the plain A4 sheet of paper that had be handed out before the test. My pal got his grade back. He scored a D-.
DecodeCritical
15. Above Average Eye Sight
Not a teacher, but one of my friends in high school got a hold of one of those "compact mirrors" (that girls use to put on make-up) and put it in his shoe just before the test.
He then took his notes and taped them to the bottom of his desk. Since he was wearing loose-fitting shoes, he was able to slip his foot in and out to see the sheet throughout the test, whenever the teacher wasn't looking.
BLKavarice
16. Win-Win
My girlfriend would wear a Bluetooth headset in university exams and she would have me study with her prior. She stays on the phone the whole time and with her long hair, no one notices.
She did tell me once that a proctor asked if she was talking to herself to which she responded, "Oh I just like to read the questions out loud."
She would read the question and I'd google away...it's funny, the better grades she got, the better physical intimacy I got.
dxiao
17. Forgetting A “Small” Detail
I taught public speaking when I was in graduate school and a freshman thought it would be a good idea to use his roommate's speech as his own.
He may have gotten away with it if he didn't forget to erase his roommate's name off the first slide…
Then swear to himself and delete his roommate's name in front of all of us… then give the speech by reading everything word for word off the screen.
Dustinatwork
18. Finding Out Anyway
Not sure if it's unique, since now it's pretty routine for me. If I suspect that a student plagiarized text from a website, I just type one of the suspicious sentences inside double quotes in Google.
I then print and staple the page to the assignment, fail it, and then call the parents. What's weird is that I warn the students that I can do this, and there are always a few of them who try it anyway.
[deleted]
19. Careful To Signs
My friend sits in front of me in Spanish and math. She stinks at both. If she taps her pen twice, she needs help, followed by the question represented by how many times she does a certain action (like raking her fingers through her hair) which is different every time.
If it is multiple choice, I'll kick her chair corresponding to the letter I chose (1=A). If it is open-ended I'll write my answer on a piece of paper, drop it, and move it under her chair using my shoe, then kick her chair to signify it is there. We've only had to use it twice. Both times we didn't get caught.
Blacknote
20. Embarrassed
My buddy is a teacher and made all the students put their cellphones on his desk during a test. This one kid who usually gets bad grades aced the test. He allows students to go to the bathroom.
So during the next test, while the kid in question went to the bathroom, he asked the class what his cell phone number was. When the kid returned, the teacher called the phone and noticed the phone ringing wasn't the one on his desk but the one in the kid's pocket.
It was vibrating but it could still be heard and the teacher approached the student like a shark. The kid got so red and nervous that he ran out of the room. The parents-teacher night was hell for that kid.
OK4U2LOVE
21. Cheating With Skirts
There were some girls I went to high school with who would get the answers somehow and write them on bits of paper. They'd wear skirts to school and put the bits of paper in their pantyhose, and then just lift their skirt up a bit to look at the answers.
No teacher in their right mind was going to ask a 17-year-old girl to lift her skirt and prove that she wasn't cheating. They got away with it multiple times which I was aware of. Not sure how they were getting the answers in advance, though.
laidymondegreen
22. Such A Bizarre Way
I'm a teaching assistant for an Intro to CS I course. At the end of the semester, the professor got an email from someone telling us that he had completed all of a student's homework that semester, giving us all of said student's information including copies of all five homework assignments.
Apparently, said student didn't pay him, so his retaliation was to turn him in to us with enough proof to guarantee he got punished. Of the handful of times people have cheated since I started it was certainly the most bizarre and unexpected.
NoctemAeternam
23. Many Ways
At my school, cheating is as follows. Spanish: Google Translate. Math: Wolfram Alpha, or make custom programs on our calculators.
Biology: for the Krebs cycle, a kid had drawn the Krebs cycle on a tissue box, and right before class took out all but one tissue, then threw the box out during the test.
Physics: pin equations to the back of our ties. Chemistry: molecular geometry was drawn on the front of the teacher's desk. People always get caught.
words_trump_deeds
24. So Close, But So Far
Not a teacher, but I have a story about a friend who got caught. We were in a Spanish class and had a vocab quiz. My friend next to me didn't study, so before the quiz, wrote the words on a small piece of paper.
During the quiz, he had the paper on his leg and would check it every so often to answer the questions. The teacher eventually caught him and told him to stand up.
However, my friend had the piece of paper just in the right spot to where it would be stuck up against his leg and the edge of the table. Then the teacher pulled the table out and there goes his cheat sheet floating down to the ground. He was so close!
Zao0ozA
25. Own Additions To The Dictionary
We had regular pieces of German second language coursework we had to memorize an entire page of German on a particular subject. We were allowed to use our own dictionary as my school never had enough.
This was a mistake. A friend of mine would bring in her own dictionary with bits of the "memorized" German in a paragraph or so on random pages within the dictionary with a number at the end of the paragraph relating to the next page where the paragraph continued.
She scored 100% on each test and got an A* at German GCSE.
[deleted]
26. Where’s The Evidence?
I have dermotographia. It is a rare skin disease, harmless, but sometimes annoying. Basically, 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 principal came along, it had all disappeared.
SlamClam
27. He Eventually Won
We had to take a math test on our laptop. All other programs needed to be closed and there were 2 teachers surveilling. My classmate installed a 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.
CopyrightRachel
28. Failing Everyone
Back in college, in math tests we needed a specific sheet of paper where the math problems were supposed to be solved, so everybody had an empty one that they had to fill up and turn in when they were done.
So pretty much, all the students brought the whole exam written down in an extra paper since the professor gave the same one every semester, and just wrote all the problems from the cheat paper, of course, hidden in a bag or under the table, to the clean one over the table.
So all cool, but this absolute imbecile brought the full cheat paper, swapped the clean one with the completed cheat paper, and turned in the test...
5 minutes after the test started… The teacher lost it, and everyone failed the test instantly, pretty sure they stoned that dude afterward.
adrianinked
29. Careless Teacher
I had a teacher once who just didn't give a crap. 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 give the following couple of answers as well, so that we all could go home earlier, as he had more stuff to do. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't work there anymore.
TJBullz
30. Lying Straight To My Face
In middle school, a girl who bullied me constantly all but shoved her head in front of my face during a math quiz.
When I glanced at her and saw her eyes fixed on my paper, she looked at me and said “I’M NOT EVEN LOOKING AT YOUR TEST OH MY GOOODDDD”. And proceeded to get highly upset when I covered my paper the rest of the time.
[deleted]
31. Clueless Teacher
In 8th grade, I cheated a couple of times. The first was on a state capital test. I literally asked my friend next to me what several state capitals were and he told me.
The teacher was right in front of both of us the whole time. Literally standing in front of my desk. We did not whisper. She was a bit clueless...
The second was on the periodic table. We sat at those three-person lab tables and I was in the middle. I had a copy of the periodic table on my lap. The two girls on either side of me kept staring at my lap.
The teacher noticed the staring and made a joking comment about what could be so distracting about my lap. The girls both turned beet red and stopped looking. The teacher did not think to check any further and I aced the test.
chalmun74
32. Unlucky Enough
"Yo, bro, what's the answer to question x?". My dude didn't even bother whispering this. Obviously, the teacher heard him and we got a zero-tolerance policy in my college so BOTH students got slapped with a 0.
The poor guy who got asked the question barely even knew the asker, he was just unlucky enough to be sitting next to him.
TheBoxerBySandG
33. Smooth Idea
This was my friend in high school. Dude would drop a pen absurdly loud, to get the teacher's attention that he was picking up a pen, and then ask me in a not-so-whisper for the answer to question 8.
At this point, I was supposed to slide my paper down so he could copy my work while he was slowly picking up his pen.
waitthisaintfacebook
34. Great Success
We had a French-speaking test, where you had to recite a speech we had already written, except no one could be arsed to learn it.
So there was this one guy who sat at the front who held his French book up like he was reading it, and on the back, he held a printed version of the person's speech. Safe to say it worked because everyone did really well.
[deleted]
35. Art Can Help In Mysterious Ways
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 would say my classmate was using his phone and it was very clear by the glow on his face. The teacher was not pleased.
NixisTM
36. Bless You!
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 on to the next word, she sneezed and at 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. It was the one out of two words on that test I got right...
zerphappy96
37. Watch Out
I was told about a kid in my niece's nursing program. The kid had a smartwatch where he could access data from his phone. Before 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 started making noises and the teacher realized he had been cheating all semester long.
No idea what happened to the kid. This must have been when the gen1 expensive smartwatches and smarter devices came out.
pklam
38. He Had Other Priorities
About 10 years ago, I was finishing my degree in telecommunications and computer engineering, we had applied electromagnetism and this was the final exam.
Now for everyone taking that course, this was one of the most feared subjects and many were on the edge of breaking that day. So much so, that one guy collapsed to the ground and was having convulsions mid-exam.
(No background on seizures or anything like that, just a regular dude). I and 2 other dudes rushed to him to try and help him, which we did. There were about 60 people on the auditory.
The situation got under control, we're waiting for the paramedics and there's this one dude going through everybody's sheets copying the answers. A fantastic human being.
coenaculum
39. Fashionable And Handy
My friend in high school wore some prepped leggings under her skirt that had a pocket sewn on and a piece of see-through plastic sewn facing outwards.
She made her cheat cards to fit that pocket and when the teachers passed, she just pulled her skirt down. Because, surprise, surprise! No teacher would ask her to lift her skirt to see if she was cheating! It was so simple, yet so genius.
CouldBeWorseCouldBeA
40. Never Getting Caught
Honestly, I cheated most of my way through college. On the harder exams at least. From my experience, the more you try to hide, the more obvious it is.
I walked into most of those tests with a full 8×10 cheat sheet in my coat or pocket or backpack, really whatever was easiest, would then just slip that under the regular test and then always be aware of where the professor/staff were. Never got caught.
FoxHarem
41. Failed Attempt
When I was in 3rd grade, we had to take a math test at the end of the day for the stuff we went over. Well, right before the test started, the teacher erased all the info on the whiteboard with all the answers on it.
During the test, I could see the imprint of the answers still on the board. After my teacher realized I was suspiciously staring at the whiteboard very hard, she cleaned the board and the answers were gone. I didn't do very well on that test...
mrcool998
42. Destroying The Evidence
During the Leaving Cert (which is the final school exam in Ireland) I was a supervising assistant for the exams as a student. This meant I sat outside and brought the students to the toilet and brought the person supervising the exams tea.
I had to bring this student, who was on my Water polo team to the toilet. As he left the cubicle, the toilet seat fell down, revealing a book hidden behind the seat resting diagonally. I didn't report him and destroyed the evidence lol, wasn't very good at my job.
Doogie34
43. Getting Away With It
I once took an exam in which we were given topics beforehand and were expected to prepare/study essays on said topics and write them once we were in the exam. Easy enough if you’re a person like me who studies for the two hours preceding the exam.
I showed up and started writing, but noticed halfway through that the dude in front of me had written his essays on his smartwatch and was just copying them onto the page. He was acting super suspiciously, always looking around- but he got away with it.
pinetreesandmanatees
44. Smoothest Cheater
I google translated my entire Spanish 2 finals, because we did it on the computer and I minimized the translate page so small I could only see a part of the text box.
Then, I would scroll down to the translation with the directional keys and infer the answer from there (the test was a multiple choice one).
TacoManifesto
45. Way Too Impressed
I had a couple of students teach themselves sign language so they could sign "A, B, C, or D" to each other. I caught on and made a test with an "E" option and made sure many answers were E. This made them create a new symbol on the fly.
I then started making two versions of the test and making sure they each had a different test from each other. This essentially solved it, but they started signing the questions to each other.
I never confronted them because I was too impressed that they were teaching themselves sign language. They both got B's in my class.
Ol_Man_Rambles