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A friend texts "mark me present, I'll be late". It feels like a small favour, but colleges punish it, often starting with the person holding the pen.
Is giving proxy attendance in college risky?
Yes, and the penalty is academic, not just a scolding. IIT Bombay's disciplinary rules for academic malpractice (July 2026) list "proxy in attendance/signing for another student" under impersonation and forging signatures, and say an FR grade will be given to the student found giving proxy. The same document says repeat offenders of any type of malpractice face a minimum of one semester's academic suspension.
An FR grade at IIT Bombay carries 0 grade points and counts as a fail, according to the institute's UG rule book. For a core course, the rule book says you must re-register for the same course and complete it, so one signature can mean failing a course and taking it again.
Other colleges are similar. One IIT Delhi course policy page says any proxy detected during surprise checks will be reported to the Dean Academics for disciplinary action, with "no negotiations". Indus University's code of conduct says marking proxy attendance for others and having attendance marked by others will attract severe punishment, and that penalties for breaching academic discipline include expulsion.
Rules vary by college, so read your own rulebook's attendance and malpractice sections.
Who gets punished: the friend or the absent student?
Possibly both. IIT Bombay's rule names the student giving the proxy. Indus University's code names both the student who marks and the student whose attendance is marked.
How many classes can you miss without breaking the rule?
Work out your absence budget on day one instead of guessing in week twelve. Some colleges set the minimum at 80%, as IIT Bombay's UG rule book and Indus University's code do; others use 75%. Take a course with 40 lectures:
At an 80% minimum, you need 32 lectures, so you can miss 8.
At a 75% minimum, you need 30, so you can miss 10.
Those absences are your cover for fever or a train delay, not free days. IIT Bombay's rule book says that below 80% attendance an instructor may award a DX grade ("drop due to inadequate attendance"), that no concession is given for absence on medical grounds, and that missing even one of a course's first three lectures can get you deregistered. Indus University's code bars students below 80% from the course and its end-semester exam, "including medical ground", and only considers sick leave with a medical certificate or a parent's leave form submitted within 7 days.
If your college uses 75%, our guide to how the 75% attendance rule works and how to track it shows how to keep a running count.
Does missing class actually hurt your marks?
It tends to. A meta-analysis by Marcus Credé and colleagues in Review of Educational Research (2010) pooled 69 samples covering 21,195 students and found an estimated correlation of 0.44 between class attendance and class grades. The authors report that attendance predicted college grades better than any other known predictor, including admissions test scores such as the SAT and high-school GPA. That is a correlation, not proof of cause, but the point stands: a proxy keeps the register clean and still leaves a gap in your notes.
What should you do instead when you must miss a class?
Check the rule: your college's minimum, the leave form, and its deadline.
Tell the professor before the class if you can. A short email works: "I will miss Thursday's lecture because of [reason]. I will submit the leave form by [date] and catch up on the material. Is there anything I should prepare for the next class?"
Submit documents on time. A medical certificate after the deadline may not count.
Get the notes from one reliable classmate and the slides from the course page the same day.
Fill the gap before the next lecture builds on it. If the topic is new to you, the Fermi Concept Library has a lesson for each concept in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing, so you can learn the idea before attempting the tutorial sheet.
Try the problems from that lecture and take the ones you get wrong to the tutorial or office hours.
For a longer absence, follow our plan for catching up after missing a week of classes. If missed classes have already led to a warning, read what academic probation means and what to do next.
Count your absence budget for each course this week, and write it on the first page of each notebook.
