We've all heard about those who have cheated and gotten away with it. Here are some people who did it creatively and had fun with it. And some if not all of these are highly clever, smart and a little frightening how smart some people are....
1. It's always good to have a lucky charm
-"One time one of my buddies stole the final out of the teacher's desk when she wasn't looking. We took the test home and used the textbook to get all the answers. Since it was multiple choice, I decided to make a coded keychain with colored beads on it. The keychain was 50 beads long and was color coded to reflect the correct answers in chronological order. For instance, red=A, blue=B, yellow=C, green=D. I attached it to my car keys and just left my keys on top of my desk as I took my test. The best part was that the teacher complimented my keychain as she handed out the tests. I told her my little sister made it for me as a good luck token for finals. I don't have a little sister."
2. Under doctor's orders...
-"During high school in the mid '90s I was part of the school newspaper. As one of the editors I got to use early versions of Photoshop (we started with three but upgraded to four by the time I was a senior) and taught myself how to use it for random s---. I had a friend who was a notorious cheat, he never not-cheated. He got the brilliant idea to Photoshop answers to s--- and make it look the text on a Dr. Pepper bottle's label (nutritional info, fine print, etc. was replaced with random cheat info.) I spent a week harnessing my PS powers to put this all together for him and he spent a week figuring out how to laminate paper and get it to look almost identical to the label on the bottle. He aced it pretty good and on the day of the test, nobody had the slightest idea that all the info he needed to pass was printed on the Dr. Pepper bottle sitting on his desk."
3. Ms. Frizzle is carefree
-"In high school chemistry class, my group of buddies and I were failing the entire semester. On top of that, I'm fairly certain the teacher lived in the woods from how she smelled, and she looked like a burne-out Ms. Frizzle with brown hair. Anyway, she was never absent at all. The one day we had a substitute, they put on some boring movie which half the class, and even the substitute teacher, fell asleep to. I got curious and poked around in the teacher's spare desk, and as I opened drawers and peeked through files, lo and behold I came upon a folder that was titled 'Final Exam Answer Key'. I almost couldn't believe my luck, and I knew right then it was just meant to be that I would cheat and manage to pass this class. So here's what we did. For the final exam, we were only allowed a pencil, the scantron sheet, and a laminated copy of the periodic table of elements. We took the answer key and copied it onto the periodic table. For 'A', it was a single dot in the bottom right corner, 'B' was two dots in corners, and so forth. The best and funniest part of the whole thing was when the teacher read aloud our scores to the class and we all had much better grades than the bright kids in the class, even. I saw the teacher years later and told her all about it. She leaned in close to me, grinning and said 'I honestly don't give a s---'. 10/10 would cheat again. "
4. STD - Save the Dates
-"In college I blew off all my homework for a math class and only took the tests. Going into the final I saw my current grade and I knew I was going to fail. After the final I went to the teacher and asked why my grade was so low (obviously I knew why). He pointed out I was missing 80% of the homework. There was a two step process to submitting work. First, you upload your homework online, then you submit it to the teacher. I proceeded to double down and say I had uploaded all the work but must have forgotten to submit. He said to go check my account and, if the homework was indeed uploaded and the upload dates were before the due dates, he would accept it. So here's where the cheating began. He had posted all the solutions to the homework. When I left his office, I bolted home and began copying all the missing homework. Now, this was 2002 and there were a lot of bugs and missing safeguards with regards to the school network. So I took a chance and changed my home PC date to be the day before an assignment was due, then uploaded that assignment. The network logged the assignment upload date based on my PC date/time, not the school network's. I did this for each assignment (missing a couple problems/assignments here and there). I went back to the teacher and he reviewed my account and dates. Ended up with a B in the class."
5. Using errors to your advantage
-"In my high school AP chemistry class the teacher accidentally left a way to cheat. He was an older guy who typed his exams on a word document, would have the right answer in red, and print out the document in black and white. Our class was the entire school year and we had an exam every two-ish weeks. Around the second or third test I noticed that one of the multiple choice answers was slightly lighter than the rest. It had very faint dashes instead of being solid black so I thought 'These have to be the right answers', and they were. So for the rest of the year, except for one or two, I was able to get modest As on the exams. I told one kid a couple of months in and he eventually told a lot of people. so before the final, one kid who knew the trick completed the test in 10 minutes, turned it in and got a 98 since they were graded on the spot. Our teacher realized his mistake then and fixed it for our very long final exam."
6. "Taking" a test
-"So I'm sitting in chemistry and our teacher hands out an insane exam. Like, I go through every question trying to answer the ones I can and I don't know a single one. So everyone else starts finishing, turning in their test on the teach's desk, and I've written literally nothing. Bell rings and I think "F--- it, just throw the test in my backpack and walk out with the class." Fast forward about a week and the teacher is passing back the exams, says to the class 'Everyone have their tests?' I innocently raise my hand and tell her no, I have not gotten my test back. She starts looking everywhere, but for some reason just can't seem to find it. I let her know that test was hard as hell, no way I could take that again. She agrees, tells me if she can't find it that she'll replace the test grade with my most recent lab grade. 0 became a 97."
7. Cheating with the arts
-"I helped at a private school in India during their finals weeks. I was told to watch out for some of the crazy cheating methods they've seen. My favorite was how one girl covered in henna tattoos (which is normal) actually inscribed all of the answers into the decorative hennas. It looked normal from a distance, too."
8. Saving some face
-"We had an online class with facial recognition/webcam testing at my university. It was one of the systems that if you looked away from the screen for too long it would stop the test and make you show your surroundings; if you didn't it would give you a 0. By far one of the hardest classes I've taken, it involved a lot of memorization and to make it better, the professor liked to use true/false questions with direct quotes from the book. There was no way to cheat...or so I thought. There were three sets of exams, and the exams were usually open for about a week. So people would meet up early on in the week and take it together. So what they would do was make the girls take it first. They would then put a small Bluetooth headset on, then put their hair down so that the camera couldn't see it. The person taking the test would be on a call with classmates in another room. She would read the questions aloud and the classmates would look the question up as needed and relay the answer. They wrote down all the questions and answers for their classmates whom would just study the test questions and take it later in the week. By far the best 'Teamwork makes the dream work' story I've ever heard of, but I'm pissed because I worked my a-- off for a B-."
9. Hidden in plain sight
-"Had a guy in my class with a massive afro. He used to roll up cheat sheets and hide them deep in this afro. He would scratch his head to get them out and put them back in. It was a pleasure to watch him in action."
10. A keystroke of fortune
-"I have no proof of this, but I swear it happened. I was a TA for a physics class in college. We give the final exam. The next day, the other TA and I are grading the exams, and two students have very similar answers. Not copied exactly, but similar enough that it's suspicious. Especially because one of the students was the lowest in the class, and the questions were pretty difficult. But these kids were nowhere near each other, and neither took bathroom breaks during the test, and we collect phones at the start. Our only possible theory is that they somehow got the test early. But I kept it locked in my closet for the days before it was given. So I began to think back. I remembered that about a month or so before, this one student was having trouble seeing an assignment online (or so he said), so he asked me to sign in to his laptop to download the file for him. So I did, and then signed out. So my theory is that this kid used some sort of keystroke recorder to get my email password, get a copy of the exam from the email from my professor, worked on the test before hand with this other kid who wasn't as good, until they had decent answers, then they both just did the test normally after that. It still haunts me to this day."
11. Transparency is key
-"I had a binder that was purple, but transparent. I would put the vocabulary quiz study guide in the front of the binder and put it on the floor. When I got stuck I would step on the binder and the sheet would be readable through it."
12. Out of the red and into the black
-"In high school math class we had to correct our papers with red ink. I would swap the ink tube out of a red pen with a black ink tube. It looked like I was 'grading' my paper, but in reality I was changing my answers."
13. Even nerds cheat on occasion
-"I wrote history notes all over the desk using the tengwar font I learnt from a friend who loved Lord of the Rings back when there wasn't any movie yet. I passed the test."
14. A quick way to get the class laughing
-"Probably the best way I saw someone cheat took place in my high school Spanish class. This one kid wrote answers on the waistband of his pants. He would periodically peek down at his pants and pull the waistband out a bit revealing what he wrote. Soon the teacher noticed and asked him loudly what he was up to, thinking she had busted him. Without missing a beat the kid looked up and said to her 'I was actually just adjusting my boner, but thanks for calling me out.' The entire class burst out laughing. The teacher had no way of responding to what was just said. Kid never got questioned about it again."
15. Erotic, but effective
-" I had a ex-girlfriend who was into some kinky stuff, so she just happened to have one of those wireless vibrator things that strap onto your leg. She had me vibe one, two, three or four pulses for A/B/C/D on a multiple choice test once. Kinky and effective. 10/10 would try again."
16. Beat the system
-"I had a pretty laid back teacher for high school forensics. If he caught you cheating he would make you retake the test after school and dock you 10%. I forgot we had a test and thought I was gonna do badly, so I purposely got caught cheating and studied in my 5th and 6th hour and ended up getting a 100%. He docked me the grade, but I still ended up with a 90% on a test I probably would have failed. It's not quite cheating but I feel like I cheated the system."
17. The sweet sounds of success
-"I was taking a driver's ed course at 16. During this course we were allowed to listen to music no problem, and I felt that there were way too many f---ing things to memorize. Got mad and figured out a plan. I got a hold of the answer key for the final test. Recorded my voice speaking all of the answers. Burned the recording onto a CD. Listened to 'music' during the final exam (we were allowed to). Passed with 95%. Not 100%. I felt like I needed to miss a couple to really pull it off."
18. A presentation like no other
-"My French teacher told a story about a student who really didn't want to present in front of the class, so the day before he told his friend to come and knock on my door crying to distract the teacher. After 10 minutes, the friend went away and when the teacher came back into the classroom, the whole class was clapping because the kid told them to clap when she came back in. He ended up with an A."
19. A permanent solution to the problem
-"In my freshman year math class, a kid wrote the distance formula on his arm. He forgot to roll back down his sleeve when he turned his test in, and the teacher asked him about it. The kid panicked and said that he had a tattoo of the distance formula. He drew it on his arm every day for the rest of the semester. Got an A."
20. When in doubt, hum it out
-"My friend and I both have perfect pitch so when one of us would get stuck on a problem we would hum a quick G-flat. Then we tap our pen to indicate number and hum A, B, C or D for the answer. We couldn't do it often though because too much noise would become suspicious."
21. Turning to prayer
-"Writing answers in Cyrillic letters on pens, claiming it's a prayer to the teacher who doesn't know what Cyrillic is."
22. Code breakers
-"Three people used Morse code to cheat in a physics exam; unfortunately the professor knew it too and told them to bring their exams up in Morse code."
23. In the clear
-"Freshman year of high school I learned how to take the vocab sheets we were given for English and would place packaging tape on the answer sheet very carefully. I put it under water to rinse the paper off, but not the ink, let it dry overnight, and then I placed packaging tape on the other side so it was not sticky anymore. Bam, you have a clear answer sheet you can place on a desk and it looks like the wood grain. 'Isn't it shiny though?' F--- yeah it is. Surprised I wasn't caught."
24. Two very different yet effective methods
-"I had to retake a neuroscience final in a room with two other students. One of them had a spy pen and was taking pictures of the questions and sending them to someone at home with the text book relaying answers back via phone to his hidden earpiece. He must have spent $500 on the equipment and to pay the guy on the phone. The other kid just brought in his study guide and put it in the back of a stack of blank papers and would flip to it periodically.
25. Poster child for cheating
-"The best I have seen was a student made a large poster board cheat sheet and hung it up in the teacher's classroom, which already had plenty of poster on the wall. He would just read right off it and got away with it once, but got caught after he tried the second time. This was in a high school class."
26. Nothing to lose, but everything to gain
-"My senior year I had to make a college portfolio in my English class. The project was given at the beginning of the quarter and we had nine weeks to do it. I didn't do any of it and about a week after it was due my teacher asked me if I turned it in. I told her that I turned it in on time and she got worried that she lost it when she took them all home. She ended up giving me an 85% because she never found it."
27. Under the cover of clouds
-"My professor loved using the campus cloud to store things like audio and sound clips, lesson slideshows...and tests. Seriously, there was the whole test on the screen. Easiest 100% I ever got."
28. Food for thought
-"I would memorize my teacher's lunch schedules and then sneak into their classroom and steal graded assignments from other students that were in the filing cabinet."
29. When hijabs really help
-"A girl wearing a hijab used to go into the bathroom before each test, put a pair of earbuds in, and conceal the wires with the hijab. So she had earphones in every time."
30. Asking the right questions
-"Once in Year 8, we had to write an essay on a certain text called 'Rabbit-Proof Fence'. I always winged my essays, but the actual content in the movie I memorized. On the day of the test, I forgot the name of one of the characters in the middle of the exam. All I did was ask, audibly, what that character's name was. Everyone stared at me, then another student just answered my question and went back to his exam. The teacher was livid, only because, since everyone now knew this minor piece of information and therefore I had no advantage, she couldn't punish me for s---."
