These are the sorts of calculations many students at Stuyvesant, New York City’s flagship public school, learn to make by the middle of their freshman year: weighing two classes against each other, the possibility of getting an A against the possibility of getting caught, keeping their integrity against making it to a dream college. By the time they graduate, many have internalized a moral and academic math: Copying homework is fine, but cheating on a test is less so; cheating to get by in a required class is more acceptable than cheating on an Advanced Placement exam; anything less than a grade of 85 is “failing”; achieve anything more than a grade-point average of 95, and you might be bound for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Yale.

In interviews this month, more than three dozen students, alumni and teachers said that large-scale cheating, like an episode in June when 71 juniors were caught exchanging answers to state Regents exams through text messages, was rare at Stuyvesant. But lower-level cheating, they said, occurs every day.

Most often, it takes the form of a few math homework answers copied wholesale from a shared note on Facebook, or the form of tip-offs from classmates who took a history exam a few hours earlier. Some go further, hiding formulas in a sleeve or in a bathroom stall, Googling facts on an iPhone or snapping a photo of test questions to send to a smart friend for help.

Survival at All Costs

At Stuyvesant, the alma mater of four Nobel laureates, students say the social currency is academic achievement.

Although students enter the school knowing they are among the best in the city, they must compete with hundreds just like them. And, they say, the pressures only grow: they are convinced that they are bound for bright futures, yet not all are equipped for the work that entails. They are trained to hand in every assignment without always believing in its value. They described teachers as being relatively sympathetic, discouraging cheating, but not always punishing it as severely as school policy dictates.