Teachers Are Revealing The Cheating Plots That Made Them Rethink Everything, And You Might Be Impressed
A few years ago, a statistic came out that more than 60% of university students admitted to cheating in some form.
This research was published a few years ago, so who knows, maybe that number has changed. Regardless, cheating is clearly pretty common.
As the years have gone by, simply looking at another person's test doesn't seem to be enough to get away with it. Students are cupping their cheating game, coming up with new and creative ways to "outsmart" their teachers. In one Reddit thread, educators shared the most elaborate cheating schemes they'd seen, and I'm honestly impressed with some of these:
1."University of Florida circa 1985. Once a final began, the answers were posted across campus so you could grade your final and figure out your grade. One fraternity had their pledges get the answers. They then used a Mr. Microphone to broadcast them to brothers via FM Walkmans."
2."Once, all students refused to take an exam because it got rated on the highest score. Since they all got zero, they all got 100%. After that, the system changed."
3."For my midterms and finals, I'd give each student a 3x5 notecard, which they could use on one side to write anything they wanted. In the real world, anyone can look up things like equations, so I figured it was fair."
"After all, I wanted to make sure they knew the operations. Incidentally, every year, the vast majority of students would say, 'After I copied all the notes on the card, I could remember them and didn't even need it!' Until one year a student came in with his card having the tinyest handwriting I ever saw. I couldn't read it. Turns out he was wearing both contacts AND his glasses, giving a major magnification effect....or so he told me years later."
4."For a Biology test, one student wrote down all of his notes on pieces of gum, then proceeded to eat the evidence one piece at a time."
5."I still hang out with an old high school teacher of mine ( I graduated in '98 ) and he fills us in on all the shit that goes on."
"The latest was 11 students, with the help of a private tutor, installed Key Loggers onto various teachers' computers. Through this, they were able to get test information and change grades. They were eventually all caught and expelled.
The kicker is that the parents of some of these teens didn't like how being expelled would hurt their precious snowflakes' chances at better colleges, so they sued the school district…"
6."My mother (a professor of nursing) told me this story about a student she had with the dumbest, most elaborate cheating method. He had two pairs of glasses one with a cheat sheet carved into the glass and one normal pair. Apparently he was switching between the glasses throughout the exam to cheat. Now a guy changing glasses ever so often becomes suspicious so they caught him after a while."
7."My best friend's mom is a prof who also works in academic honesty at a major Canadian university. A student once turned in a thesis with 8 pages copied word for word from a book SHE wrote. To her. In her class."
8."I had this very quiet and polite student in 7th grade English class who came up to me at the end of the year when I had just announced the final grades. He told me that his grade average was way too high for a C and asked me to double-check my grade list. He was genuinely shocked that according to my list, he had gotten a D for the first exam at the beginning of the year and promised to bring in his test the next day."
"Lo and behold, one day later he showed up with the exam — a clear A. Now normally I remember such standout grades, that's why I got slightly suspicious and took the exam home with me. I looked over the whole thing again and realized a number of things: first of, the papers were a tad darker than what I usually print out. Second, there were dozens of language mistakes that were left uncorrected, and third, my signature looked slightly off...
In the end, it turned out that he had taken his old exam, scanned it, photoshopped all the hand-written text out, printed it, filled everything in again, and 'corrected' it with a red pen. Pretty nifty for a 13-year-old — had he given himself a more believable grade, he might have pulled it off."
9."Professor prints out all 150 exams the day before the test and leaves them on his desk accidentally. He suspects a student came in during office hours and stole an exam to fill in at home. Sure enough, he counts 149 exams. Instead of rewriting the entire test and cutting his losses, he goes to the paper cutter and chops off a quarter inch from the bottom margin of all 149 exams. When the test was over, he straightened the stack of exams, and up pops the one that was stolen the day before."
10."Had an exam worth 50% of our grade. Prof was quite strict about pencils, water bottles, etc. We asked her what the deal was, and she regaled us with a story about a Chinese girl who wore a beautiful, long dress with Mandarin writing all over her dress. Turns out the girl had sewn patches with the answers to the test, onto her dress."
11."There was one class at a school near me that is famous all across the state because in one exam, the entire front of the room raised their hand to distract the exam supervisors so the back of the room could discuss questions, then vice versa. Worked for them, too."
12."Not a teacher, but heard of a few kids cheating on an African geography test. He wrote all 54 counties on a tiny piece of paper and rolled it around one of those motivational pens (the kind with the window so every time you click the pen you see a new inspirational message). Every time he needed an answer he would just click the pen."
13."Invisible Ink on all arms and other skin-exposed areas containing notes, etc. Also, bring a UV pen, and you have yourself some nice invisible notes. The uni countered this by installing UV lights in the exam halls."
14."In my math class, some kid saved all the tests. He sold pictures of them to kids for 20 a piece the following year. He made a shitload of cash."
15."At the school where I taught for four years, there was a core group of girls who were always in the female counselor's office (we had two counselors: one man, one woman). The female counselor –let's call her Barb– was one of those sorts who had a bad high school experience, so she tried to make the 'cool' girls her friends now. It was sad, really."
"Anyhow, Barb wrote out passes for the girls to take tests in her office, claiming test anxiety or some other bullshit. These girls would then use Barb's computer or would be given the answers outright by Barb. They all got A's on the exams. I, and other teachers, tried to get the principal to intervene on this, but he had no balls, so we just had to accept this is how it was. I started making all my tests essay exams, because I knew that Barb couldn't put two logical thoughts together, and the girls' grades normalized. It was a lot of extra work for me, though."
16."I knew a kid who would bring a bag of Skittles to class every time there was a test, and, being the smartest kid in class, would have everyone cheat off him. He would go one at a time and put the skittle at the end of his desk for everyone to see. He is the real MVP! Green Skittle: A, Yellow Skittle: B, Red Skittle: C, Orange Skittle: D"
17."My English teacher last year told us that the reason he doesn't allow headphones anymore was because one year, a kid recorded all his notes on a voice memo and played it through his headphones during the test. He got away with it, but the reason he got caught was because he went around bragging to all his friends how he did it."
18."My mum is a lecturer, and she often has overseas students in her classes that are incredibly intelligent but have very poor English because the English test they make them take to pass is ridiculously easy."
"One year, her smartest student handed up an essay that was almost completely whited out, and they couldn't figure out why. It turned out he had pulled out the entire tape of white out and, with the assistance of a friend, wrote the essay in perfect English all along the whiteout tape. It would have worked if he hadn't used so much white out. The sad thing is that he could have passed the course even if he failed the exam because his other work was so good."
19.And finally, "Girl found answers to a 100 question multiple choice exam. Girl makes a color code system where A= red, B= yellow, etc. The girl then made a 'polka dot' nail polish pattern where her first finger had the first 10 answers, the next finger had the next 10, and so on. Pretty clever, I thought."
Do you have any wild cheating stories? Let us know in the comments below!
