Could this constitute cheating?

No it doesn’t. There will be enough difference in style and opinion or point of view. To some degree your knowledge on tests is memorization.

It is normal to have anxiety. Staying busy, exercising and such will help reduce the stress level.

You will have your results before too long.

I took a Physics final in college that was suppose to take two hours. I completed and walked out in just over twenty minutes. The professor looked at me like I was crazy or had given up. The exam was corrected and returned with a 97 %. The professor told my I was 20 points higher than anyone else, he aske how did I do it?
I asked if he went to a certain University, he said yes, I asked if he had a professor by the name of Dr, XXX, he said yes. I then showed him a Physics review and test exams written by Dr. XXX. The questions were in the practice exam.
Being prepared for an exam is not cheating.

I’m a grad student and I grade undergraduate papers and exams for a living.

If I were grading an exam and came across an essay that was strikingly reminiscent of another paper (in other words, they had the same argument, used the same evidence, and employed similar phrasing/vocabulary), it would set off red flags for me. I would probably ask the professor for instructions.

I suggest that you not contact the professor to alert them of this situation, but if they do bring up the topic of cheating, explain to them what you told us, and it would be best if you can prove that you prepared these answers ahead of time with documentary evidence. (Do you still have the notes you were working on while studying together?)

It is a testament to your dedication that you were able to deduce likely test responses, but I do not find it very impressive that you both memorized an essay word for word. Honestly, that falls in a grey area, and some professors might call that plagiarism, whereas others might not. It probably also depends on what the honor code is like at your university.

Thank you for the replies. Oh gosh. It seems that this is going to haunt me until results day then. A problem with my subject is that there are only so many ways you could answer a question (law). So everyone sitting the paper will have to discuss identical cases and academic opinion. They expect so much in depth knowledge that preparing model essays really is the only way to go, unless you just have a incredibly sponge like brain. The lecturer even provided a model skeleton structure for the exam topics, in so many words (which is what my friend and I went on).. And I would imagine a large percentage of the rest of the class too.. I suppose my one comfort is that no one has ever said our method was prohibited. They advise against memorizing prepared essays, but that seems to be because people do not always prepare enough to actually answer the questions that come up… Which we happened to do. I’ll just take this anxiety as a lesson to change my essays that I memorize for future, if only to avoid the worry that it’s overly similar.

I’m not a prof, but I’ve graded a lot of papers as a TA, and I agree with @bookish1.

Oh dear. I was hoping that my anxiety might be unfounded but it appears that isn’t going to be the case, based on the responses.. although half of me is wondering how it really could be cheating when essentially we guessed what was coming, no prior knowledge to the titles, weren’t colluding in the exam itself (seat numbers are recorded), and shaped our model answer to respond to the actual question (it’s hard to say how identical our papers are without being able to see them…). I suppose all that I can do is say a prayer. Can strategic preparation really be penalised?

@nuclear What I’m saying (and I think @bookish1 was as well) is that the worst thing you could do is simply say a prayer. If you did really prepare for the exam so carefully with your friend, one or the other of you will have notes to show this. Just talk to the prof in person, show him that you are concerned that your exams might appear to be the result of cheating, and offer to show the notes if necessary. This is infinitely better than waiting to see if you “get caught”. If he has to call you in to answer for your answers, whatever you do will make you look guilty, especially if you have clearly been expecting him to contact you about it. It’s much harder to hide that sort of thing than you probably realize.

And, coming at it from a different direction, if you are proactive about the situation, you will likely take away any power he has to penalize you for plagiarizing.

From what you describe you and your friend did Not cheat.
But it’s understandable that you are concerned that it might look like you cheated.
As you note there are only so many ways to answer law questions.

If confronted just tell the truth, you two studied together, and you did not sit anywhere near each other for the exam.

If your exam answers were strikingly similar, the marker might flag it. Did you have any idea about the exam/essay topics? Or did you just work together as a study group? I actually encourage my students to share resources, to brainstorm different theories, the main arguments and key points. I even get them to create their own questions to answer so they’re thinking about the course content and working with the information actively.

If it does come up, and it’s quite likely it won’t, just explain as you did here. In future perhaps try not to work together quite so specifically. Don’t memorise the same information. Work to understand and apply theories and ideas rather than memorising how to explain them.

An update….

Somehow, it appears that everything was fine. My friend did better than I did on our test so I suppose we didn’t write word for word (relief). I was also just named the valedictorian of my law school’s graduating class. Go figure. I won’t be doing this again though, the worry for the past week has deterred me (although I still feel like I worked very hard, perhaps the fatigue has ebbed away our judgement a little).

Good for you! Glad it worked out okay @nuclear. That you were so worried speaks volumes to me about your sincerity.

@nuclear: Thanks for the update. I’m glad to hear everything was fine. Congratulations on being valedictorian!!! Best of luck to you.