[pcrh]

Your friend's approach doesn't sound like cheating, after all the wrote the original essays.

It's more similar to spending hours preparing small exam cheat sheets, and then realizing that you didn't need them during the exam, as you had learnt the material.

[Biologist123]

It definitely wasn’t cheating. But I felt it was not in the spirit of the exam system which I believed - maybe wrongly - was designed to test one’s ability to write a fresh essay from scratch under timed conditions.

What would you say about someone getting AI to write high standard essays and simply spend learn those word-for-word?

It’s also not cheating but not in the spirit of the thing I think.