25 Creative Ways Students Have Cheated On Tests

A friend sat behind one Redditor and would tap him on the back if he needed an answer. His friend would tap the side of his head to give him the multiple choice answers. 1 tap was A, 2 taps B, etc… In return, if he needed an answer, he’d hold the pen to his head and his friend would give him the answer by tapping him on the back. They never got caught.

In high school, since most math teachers asked their students to hold up their calculators with a “cleared screen,” Tyler Brown programmed his to have the same screen when it really wasn’t cleared. Then, he’d use his calculator like normal with all the programmed formulas built in.

A guy with his masters in Econometrics who did consulting work for various forms of government got a letter offering work but asking tons of hypothetical questions. He soon realized the questions were from a take-home exam; a student had mailed him for the answers. In turn, the guy messaged the surrounding universities about it. He got a letter back from a professor saying to do the work, as usual, cash the check, and put very specific answers on the test. Two weeks later, the professor wrote back saying they busted the student.

One Redditor claimed a Biology student wrote down all of his notes in tiny letters on the gum and then ate the evidence. They must have eaten a lot of gum.

Ever wonder why cell phones are no longer allowed in testing centers? One student’s method, if they were taking tests on a computer, was to take screenshots of the test as they took it and send them to friends who were going to take the test later.

One student named John bought a bottle of Snapple and removed the label carefully. He wrote the study guide on the label and reapplied it to the filled Snapple bottle. While taking the test, he drank the bottle and looked inside to see the answers.

Physics tests can be really tough. Hours of study are needed to ace them. But, one student on Twitter, posted his cheating technique before his physics test where he taped the formulas underneath his long cosmetic fingernails.

According to one Redditor, some female students wrote the answers to a test on their thighs and wore black tights to the test. They could stretch their tights a little to see the answers through the fabric, and of course, no teacher is going to come up and check on that.

A math teacher allowed his students to have a 3×5 card which they could write anything they wanted on one side for their midterms and finals. Most students said they didn’t even need the card, but one student came in with the tiniest handwriting written on the card. The teacher couldn’t read it at all. Turns out, the student was wearing both contacts and his glasses, giving him a magnification effect to read the answers.

In preschool, a student who hated music tried to switch clothes with a student who loved it so the student who loved it could go to music twice. Impressed by this elaborate ruse, the preschool teacher let the music-hating student go to art twice instead.

One Redditor said in their high school, one teacher was a sucker for pretty girls that would hang around his classroom. One pretty girl would be in his room and take pictures of the exam answer sheet when he wasn’t looking. She handed it over to everyone and the whole class started to do well. The jig was up when the kid who made single digits started getting 100% scores. He ruined it for everyone.

On Quora, a student explained he was taking a Sanskrit exam and struggling. He looked at another student’s desk and they were using sheets of paper with the entire chapter on it in tiny text. After asking him how he did it, the student explained it was a micro photocopy. It blew his mind.

In first grade, one Redditor explained that their class required they use binder blockers during spelling tests so students wouldn’t cheat off each other. This student instead just wrote down the hardest words on the binder blocker and used it as a cheat sheet. They made it all the way to the spelling bee and failed miserably.

A student in a drivers education course was frustrated by the class, thinking there were too many things to memorize. Instead of studying, they found the answer key to the test, recorded the answers on a CD, and during the test pretended to listen to music. Supposedly, listening to music was okay while taking a test at their school. They got a 95% just to make it look legitimate.

One Redditor explained they watched and memorized their teacher’s lunch schedules. When they left the classroom, they would sneak in and steal other student’s graded assignments in the filing cabinet.

In Thailand, a medical student wore glasses with a tiny camera built into it. The feed went to other medical students and they copied the questions and found the answers. Then, they sent those answers to the medical students’ Apple Watches as they took the exam. They were eventually busted and the exam was canceled. Of course, the medical students involved were expelled.

One Redditor helped her boyfriend cheat while he went to school online. When he took tests, his camera was always on and his browser was locked down as to not Google any of the answers. However, he connected his computer to a television and she would sit out of view of the camera, researching the answers for him from the TV. She’d write down the answers on a piece of paper and show him.

One student waited until their teacher’s classroom was empty and found a way to hack into their computer. They quickly installed a keylogger which would record the teacher’s every keystroke, giving the student access to test information. While it was initially successful, eventually the school caught on and found the student who did it. They were swiftly expelled and forced to pay a big fine.

A law student took her textbook into the classroom to take an exam. That, actually, was allowed and wasn’t the problem. In the textbook were pages of notes she wrote in invisible ink and used a small blacklight on her pen to read them. The cheater didn’t last too long though as she was seen by both other students and the teacher.

In Mahnar, a small Indian village, family and friends were seen scaling the tall building of the Vidya Niketan school to pass cheat sheets to the students during an exam. When authorities tried to stop them, they threw stones at them. Thousands of students involved in cheating at the school were expelled.

In an essay on cheating, published at the University of Michigan, the author writes of a student who used a large and thick rubber band to write all the answers on it. The student would stretch the rubber band to write the answers so that when it wasn’t stretched, the answers weren’t there. Then, that student would use the rubber band during the test and the teacher never caught on.

Rather than writing answers on their hands or arms, one student wrote answers inside their fingers. If they were asked to inspect their hands, they could keep their fingers closed. When the teacher looked for cheating students, they would put their hand on their forehead in frustration to look at their fingers.

While cleaning the kitchen, an elementary school age girl found a pencil broken lengthwise and noticed that it had carefully written notes on it. She then realized it was her older high school brother’s pencil and called for him. He got into big trouble from their parents, but she said she thought it was a pretty genius move on his part.

A student who was also a known athlete frequently came into class wearing ace-wrap for injuries. Rarely would the teacher suspect anything of it nor check the wrap for fear of injuring the student. So, this student used that to their advantage and wrote notes underneath the wrap and would check it during exams.

One student would find a way to put a smartphone between their legs and hide it underneath. They’d adjust their chair just right and have a lowered position so they could look at the test and screen without looking suspicious. If the teacher came close, they would just close their legs.