Photo/Illutration A message from “a female student preparing to take a university entrance exam” sent to a University of Tokyo student on Dec. 14, 2021, asks him to “solve questions as a test to evaluate your tutoring ability.” (Provided by the University of Tokyo student)

A 19-year-old university student said she used a tutor-matching website and a hidden smartphone to cheat on an exam in an attempt to enter a more prestigious school, police said.

The student, who attends a university in Osaka Prefecture, appeared at the Marugame Police Station in Kagawa Prefecture with her mother and grandmother on Jan. 27.

“I realized I had done something serious after seeing the news reports (about the cheating),” police quoted the student as saying.

Reports had spread about the apparent cheating on Jan. 15, the first day of a unified university entrance exam. Pictures of questions in the subject “World History B” were leaked to outside people during the test, following earlier requests for help on answering them.

According to police sources, the student admitted to leaking the questions while taking the exam at a university in Osaka Prefecture.

“I photographed the questions with a smartphone that I had hidden under the sleeve of my outerwear and sent the pictures (to outside people). I’m so sorry,” they quoted her as saying.

She said she surrendered to police in Kagawa Prefecture because she was not known there and wanted to avoid drawing attention to the cheating scandal, the sources said.

As for the reason behind her cheating, she said, “I tried to enter other universities, but my grades didn’t go up.”

She also said she had registered with the tutor-matching website in December last year “for the purpose of cheating,” the sources said.

Pictures of the questions were sent to other university students who have registered as possible tutors on the website.

Around 30 pictures were received by two University of Tokyo students via the Skype communication app during the exam on Jan. 15.

They had exchanged messages before the exam with someone who identified herself as “a female student preparing to take a university entrance exam” through the tutor-matching website, according to a police source.

The female student asked them to solve questions that she would send them “to test your tutoring abilities.”

Police believe that at least two other students were asked to answer exam questions in the same way.

The Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo is expected to question the 19-year-old on suspicion of fraudulently obstructing business.

The National Center for University Entrance Examinations, which operates the unified university entrance exam, had asked Tokyo police to investigate the incident.

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