If you claim you’ve never cheated on anything in school than you are either a liar or a huge nerd and I’ll let you choose which you’d rather be. At his point cheating in school has evolved into its own art form. Luckily I went to school while teachers were doing their best to catch up with students and technology. This meant if you cheated on a test it was fairly easy and I don’t feel bad because it was often an entire class project. We were all in it together students working together to find loopholes so we could spend less time studying and more time partying, and my god did it work. Bottomline is you need to think outside the box when it comes to cheating like these 30 genius cheaters. Cheating is usually scummy but cheating in school is more or less harmless, just don’t get caught!
1. Clever, clever.
2. God, I miss those old desks.
The best place to hide things is right in plain sight. We had old desks that had all sorts of wear on them, so I’m simply wrote what I needed on my desk really really lightly with a pencil. You could even erase it with a swipe of your hand if the teacher thought something was up.
3. Technology just putting professors in body bags.
Yesterday my class had a science test on an iPad. My friend searched the questions on the internet and airdropped the answers to everybody.
4. Reading 50 translations from a stamp is impressive.
I used to type my answers into a grid and make the font a size 2 or something. I could fit 50 Spanish translations on the size of a postage stamp more legibly than I could have ever written it. I’d even pass them out to friends.
5. At least he’ll get an A for effort.
Teacher told me this one. This kid was one of those kids who hardly showed up to class, so it was a surprise he showed up for the final. The kid asked to put down the window at the beginning of class because it was warm in the room, so my professor let him. The kid scribbled on his paper for 30 minutes and then asked to go to the bathroom, which my professor allowed. He came back and finished the test and then left.
The twist in all of this? The kid had dropped a copy of the test out of the window to his friend down below, who went to the lounge and took the exam. They then met up in the bathroom and the kid took the test from his friend and went back to class, wrote his name on it and then turned it in.
The only fault in this plan was that another professor happened to be looking in that direction as soon as the test was dropped out of the window, and proceeded to foil the whole plan.
6. I graduated high school in 2011, and I still used this trick.
Back in ’99 or so when scientific calculators were new-ish (I think?) I got my own rather than use the school ones.
They would check our pockets and our stuff to make sure we didn’t have a cheat sheet.
They would check our calculators to make sure we didn’t have anything written. However I had a cheat sheet on paper, on the inside of the calculators cover which fit behind. So I showed my screen and that it was blank but no one removed the lid.
So I had to slide up the lid about an inch, and had written everything down as tiny as I could.
Cheated and got away with it.
7. Is it cheating if the school gives you a translator?
For some reason a school had the french test take place on a computer and the browser that was installed was chrome and chrome has an auto-translate feature.
8. Imagine this elaborate scheme ended up not working?
My brilliant uncle was a PhD candidate in the 70’s at a pretty prestigious institution in the US. Well back in the day, to graduate with a PhD in his field of study (engineering), you had to demonstrate your mastery of a foreign language other than English. And by foreign language, only French, German and Spanish counted. Even though my Uncle was born abroad and was fluent in other languages, the administration refused to let him pass the foreign language requirement without mastery of one of the above languages.
Upon inquiring on what it would take to pass out of the language requirement, he was told that it would be based on comprehension of one of these (Spanish, French or German) books where a random page would be selected by the faculty for the student to translate.
He promptly selected the French hardcover book, took it to his girlfriend at the time and cracked open that book to pages 165/166. With his girlfriend’s translation, he memorized the contents of those pages.
The next day, he opened that book to page 165, creased the spine and closed it. He repeated that same action the day after. Again he did the same the next day. And the day after that. And so on for the next year until it was time to demonstrate his mastery of the French language. Stepping into the professors office, he handed over the book and the professor flipped open the book to a random page.
The professor handed over the book back to my uncle. Looking down, my uncle saw pages 165/166, cracked a little smile and walked away with his PhD just a month later.
9. I can’t believe more people don’t do this.
Had a buddy take an online course. Wrote to the company that did the book/materials for the course saying he was a professor and wanted to use their materials for the course. They sent him all the answers and such. Brilliant.
10. Going above and beyond pays off sometimes.
First we dumpster dived to get the mimeographed test. Yes this was the 80s. We had to tape the mimeograph to the dorm window backwards because its a reversed image. The test was multiple choice so placed tiny pin holes running the length of the pencil. 1 hole for A. 2 holes for B. Etc. It was a lot of work but we actually had to miss a few to make it legit.