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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

I've seen people spend far more effort trying to cheat on tests than if they'd simply studied the material.

I used to do that with cheat sheets; I’d put so much effort into minimizing and formatting the content to stuff everything into the one-page limit, that by the time I took the test I had the whole thing memorized, and make no use of it during the exam

Definitely guilty of this. The real irony of it is that the cheating on the exam was actually far more of a challenge and had an adrenaline rush to it. That's why I did it at least.

I remember one method I would use is to simply memorize thousands of multiple choice questions from the test bank. That way when you took the exam, you would already be familiar with the question on the exam and how to solve it.

I once asked my high school teachers why, on the multiple choice tests he gave, if one answer was "all of the above" or "none of the above" it was always the correct answer.

He laughed and said because the students needed all the help they could get. Years later I realized he probably was trolling me.

If the right answer is "all of the above" do you loose points for also checking the above? What if you check all the answers but not the all inclusive one?

> I remember one method I would use is to simply memorize thousands of multiple choice questions from the test bank. That way when you took the exam, you would already be familiar with the question on the exam and how to solve it.

That's not cheating per se, though, just studying with previous exam questions as practice material. I'd wager all students that can access old tests do that.

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