You know what I find ridiculous?
This rumor is going around that if you rub a chap stick on the side of a scan tron (where the black lines are) you will get a perfect score due to the fact that "you can't write on wax."
You see, the people believe that if you put wax here the scan tron will not be able to detect the wrong answers, and therefore will not tally them at the end.
This is false, the scan tron does not tally answers at the end of it.
Since the scan tron picks up the reflective properties of a #2 pencil it wouldn't matter where you put the chap stick!
Anyways, even if you did succeed your teacher would look at how well of a score you got compared to the other students and mark it themselves; and they might even realize what you did and you'd get in more trouble, or worse... a zero.
I just needed to get that off my chest because people are so lazy when it comes to school! Urgh!
The best way to pass a test is to study! Mmk?

That's actually very silly because even if you could make the machine fail to tally... you'd only result in it failing to tally your CORRECT answers. Think about it... if you leave it blank, does it fail to mark you wrong because it doesn't pick up anything? No. Much the opposite, it marks you wrong because of the fact it didn't read a right answer. It's looking for correct answers, not incorrect ones.

Though some systems might be different in which it checks both ways so it can penalize you for wrong answers as well as rewarding for right (such as in SATs).

Attempts to cheat usually tend to backfire more than anything else. You end up getting no credit for it rather than whatever score you would have gotten for just doing it legit. I don't think anyone can manage to get a 0 taking a test legitimately, so you basically beat your caught-cheating result no matter what.

Crazy Li : Exactly! It's just so frustrating how lazy some people are. I saw this on tumblr originally and I was so skeptic about it. There's about 300,000 notes on it or something (which means A LOT of people have seen it) and it looks like most of them believe it and that's just ridiculous.
Sigh... I really just needed this off my chest though because jeez! How uninformed can you be?

Here I was, thinking this would be about scantrons in general, and not just about a silly cheat for one.

That does sounds rather... silly. Reminds me of all the stupid rumored things I heard as a child, such as secret elevators hidden in a school, or that some teachers never fail anyone (though once found that true for ONE class).

As for trying to cheat a scantron, the only thing I heard was how they work. At least for one class of mine, the teacher would first put in a scantron with all the correct answers, and then the machine would know to check the future scantrons for those answers. One time the teacher messed that up and put in a student's paper first, mucking up everyone's grades, forcing her to grade them manually since the machine marked up the papers.

This has been going on since time began almost. Everyone always wants to find ways to cheat the system.

There is no way that Wax works. Scantrons detect the reflective properties of a Number 2 pencil. Since Chapstick is non-reflective and transparent there is no way this works.

There are several websites that also debunk this theory, here's one of them. http://www.thedailylegend.com/can-you-cheat-on-a-scantron-test-using-chapstick/

I agree though, if people spent as much time STUDYING as they do looking for ways to cheat the system they would probably get WAY better grades lol.

I had never heard of this before and thought this topic would be about the Scantron messing up. This is the funniest thread I have seen all year. It makes me laugh when people try and cheat. I think people would be a lot better off studying instead of trying to cheat the system.

Metalnow : yeah that does sound pretty crazy 

Wow rubbing chalk on a scantron you will get a perfect score that's the most ridiculous thing I heard all day

I don't mind them, I get them nearly every test. They save everybody time, and they're useful.

I don't like how they're nearly always accurate though.

I just did a 100 question Scantron on my History Exam today.

If anybody comes up with a good way to cheat, it would be good knowledge.