The Baltimore Catechism teaches us that the Seventh Commandment forbids, among other things, cheating.  I would think violating a commandment is always a grave sin.

261. What does the seventh commandment forbid?

Besides stealing, the seventh commandment forbids cheating, unjust keeping of what belongs to others, unjust damage to the property of others, and the accepting of bribes by public officials.

I would think violating a commandment is always a grave sin.

How could you say such a thing? This isn't true.

It's only mortally sinful if the university degree is in undertaking and embalming sciences.

What do you mean by "if the university degree is in undertaking and embalming sciences"?

Any degree doesn't hinge on one single exam, but it is the aggregate of them all. You need to pass all the classes and all the exams. So if you continue to flunk just one class you will never get a degree.

I know of someone who needed to do good in the final of one business class in order to pass it. He wasn't failing it as it was, but he needed to do very well in the final to pass it. Simply passing the final wasn't going to cut it. The final was 4 chapters. He read 2 and a little of the 3rd one, so he didn't really study. He clearly wasn't ready and wasn't going to do any good in the exam. This final exam was open book and open note. You could even use your laptop, ipad etc. if you had the book in pdf. This person had the book in pdf. So his plan was to just use his ipad in the exam and search for the answers with the search function. But the problem was that the answers weren't really in the book. They were very different than the book. So even with open book he was going to do bad in the final and fail.

Now, 99% of the other students were all cheating. They had the "test banks", and they were even using the internet with their phones and computers etc. The professor was just sitting in the front and doing something with some papers. So you could say that he was encouraging the students to cheat since most of them were even talking among themselves and having conversations. All the professor needed to do was raise his head once and look around to see they were all cheating. There was no way for him to not know there was cheating going around, you could just hear the buzz. The classroom was small, with 20 students.

So the person I am talking about notices all this cheating going on all around him. There's wifi in the classroom and he knows he can just search for the answers online; the exam is 100% multiple choice. Or he can just say yes to the other students, who are even offering him the answers and asking him if he wants them.

So he decided to cheat. The professor is endorsing it anyway by not doing anything and letting the students practically have conversations. He figures the exam is unjust as it is because the questions don't even have anything to do with what you had to read. He even said that he knew of this girl who did read all the 4 chapters and highlighted and reviewed etc. and really did study well but that she was lost in the exam and didn't know what to do. He says she failed it even though she studied very hard.

So was is mortally sinful to cheat in this situation? He didn't study, yes, but the exam seems to have been unpassable anyways since someone else who studied hard for it for days and didn't cheat got screwed and failed it.

What about guessing, as in multiple choice,  I confess I have guessed and never thought it might be sinful.  Of course that was a long time ago, when I was novus ordo, no grace.  

How would guessing be sinful? Probably not studying in the first place which leads you to guess is the sin.

Quote from: ggreg

It's only mortally sinful if the university degree is in undertaking and embalming sciences.

What do you mean by "if the university degree is in undertaking and embalming sciences"?

Clearly you never read you catechism.  A mortal sin has to involve "grave matter".

Quote from: Malleus

I know it is certainly sinful to cheat on tests etc. But would it be mortally sinful? I don't know if it would be considered sufficiently grave matter.

I am referring to a university-level exam.

It is a mortal sin.

Uhm, no; not necessarily.

There are many things that could change the nature of the sin.  Did someone just cheat on one question and raise the score from a 90 to a 95?  What is the importance of the exam and the consequences of cheating?  Was someone else defrauded of something based on the cheating?

It depends on the consequences and the circuмstances.  So, for instance, if someone cheated on their medical boards and became certified as a doctor only as a result of cheating, that would likely constitute a grave sin.  If cheating allowed you to get a scholarship you didn't otherwise deserve.  There are lots of factors involved.  Just ask a priest and explain all the circuмstances.  There's also the subjective disposition up front.  Did the person think it was a mortal sin before or during the act and will to do it anyway?  It's not easy and should not be answered definitively by the untrained members of an internet forum.

If it's a lie that doesn't hurt or harm anyone, then isn't it a venial sin? Maybe I'm wrong about that.

But maybe the question should be this, instead of whether it's a mortal or venial sin:

Is it unpleasing to God when someone cheats on a test? Because it seems to me that that's what we should be concerned about. If we are thinking of cheating, we should ask ourselves if God would be disappointed in us if we did so. It's out of our love for God that we should avoid sin.