• How did a class get all A’s on an exam by NOT taking it?
How did dozens of parents pass their kids notes in a closed exam?
From cheats to loopholes, here are 10 of the most outrageous things people have done to
pass their exams
10 – Not showering before exams • Passing exams is a big deal in South Korea,
where kids as young as 7 go to classes and study upwards of 60 or 70 hours in an average
week.
• So naturally, there are any number of superstitions and methods about passing exams.
One of the more popular superstitions is to not shower during exam prep.
• It’s specifically about not washing your hair.
The idea behind the superstition is that the shower will wash all the knowledge out of
your head.
• Of course, in Korea, exams are a week-long thing, and some people take that superstition
into the study period before exams as well.
So after several weeks of this… well, you can imagine.
9 – Morse code • It’s ironic when the best thing to cheat
a test is to learn a complex communication system to cheat.
• But that is precisely what happened when a group of students all banded together to
cheat on their exams.
• For multiple-choice questions, they would tap out the answers to each other by tapping
their pencils in Morse Code.
• Other versions of this have come up – blinking in Morse Code, foot-tapping in Morse Code,
there’s even a phone app that will vibrate in Morse Code while it’s in your pocket.
8 – Tampon notes • There are only so many things you’re
allowed to bring with you into an exam hall.
• Pens and pencils, sure.
Erasers and other writing implements, of course.
Anything more than that, and it starts to get iffy.
• Of course, if you’re a woman, you’re also allowed to bring a tampon into the exam
hall.
Because hey, sometimes that time of the month is at the same time as exams, for when life
sucks double-hard.
• But one girl figured out a way to use this loophole to her advantage.
She wrote a series of notes on her tampon, and brought it into the test with her.
• She apparently got away with it, though it’s hard to imagine nobody getting suspicious
of her staring intently at her tampon. 7 – Covert tech
• The rise of new technologies has made it easier than ever to cheat on tests.
This is becoming so widespread, it’s hard to nail it down to a single thing.
• One example comes from a medical college in Thailand.
The student wore Google Glass-style eyeglasses with spy cameras installed in them.
• With those, he captured the exam questions, and sent them to friends of his who looked
up the answers and sent them to his smartwatch.
• In 2016, approximately one in every four discovered attempts to cheat on a test involved
the use of an electronic device.
6 – Water Bottle Cheat Sheet • You’re totally allowed to bring a water
bottle to your exam.
So obviously, people have found a way to cheat with that as well.
• Most people who try this simply write notes on the inside of the water bottle label,
but there are even more creative ways to make this work.
• One huy actually printed up a custom false label for his bottle that looked identical
to a regular bottle, except the writing contained notes and answers to his test.
• So you have to figure he at least has a future in graphic design, if not whatever
subject he was cheating in.
5 – Body doubles • Some people try to cheat on their tests
by hiding notes or covertly communicating with each other.
• But there’s a different school of thought on how to make this happen.
Just don’t show up at all.
Bail on the test, and find someone who looks like you, and is way smarter than you, to
take the test.
• “Oh sure,” you say, “but how practical can it possibly be to cheat via body double?”
• Well, in Haranya, India, over 50 cases of body double cheating were uncovered on
recruitment tests for government jobs, and that was just in 2009.
• It is suspected that this has been going on for years, and the total number of cheaters
may be in the thousands.
4 – Help from Parents • For those people in India who do actually
show up for their own exams, there are some ways to still get away with cheating.
• Ask your parents.
• Because apparently parents in India will become Spiderman to deliver notes to their
kids.
• This isn’t just one or two instances.
It looks like half the school turned out to scale the building and pass their kids cheat
sheets through the window.
• As you might expect, somebody noticed, and it became a huge scandal.
3 – UV pen • A law student entered her exam with her
textbook, which was allowed.
• What wasn’t allowed was the 24 pages’ worth of notes written in invisible ink.
She wrote the notes in invisible ink, then affixed a UV light to her pen, so she could
read them.
• She was caught, and immediately failed the test.
She appealed the ruling, saying she was treated “unfairly.”
• Naturally, she lost that appeal.
2 – Boycott curve • Grading on a true curve means is a tricky
business.
It means that the highest score on an exam or assignment gets an A, and grades adjust
downward from there.
• So, what happens if everyone gets the exact same score?
And what if that score is zero?
• That was the experiment tried at Johns Hopkins University, in which a professor who
used a true curve found one of his exams boycotted entirely.
The students showed up for the exam… and waited outside, refusing to take it.
• And it worked.
The professor gave the entire class an A on the test – but he amended his grading policy
the next semester.
Now it says, “if everyone scores zero points, everyone gets zero percent.”
1 – Hacking the teacher’s computer • There’s cheating on a test.
And then there’s just looking past the test and hacking the grade itself.
That’s what 11 students tried to do in Newport Beach, California, by installing a keylogger
on a teacher’s computer.
The goal was basically to install the keylogger on the computer to get the login credentials
and change students’ grades in the system.
• That way, even if the students failed their tests, they could just change it so
it looked like they didn’t.
• A 28-year-old tutor in the area was accused of being the ringleader, and a search of his
apartment turned up spy cameras, keyloggers, and a bunch of electronics even police couldn’t
identify.