Life is all about learning, and so is virtual life in "The Sims 4," Electronic Arts' successful simulation.

Acquiring and maintaining new skills can be hard, however, and if you're the kind of student that likes to cheat on an exam, then maybe you'd also like to cut a few corners in the game.

Lucky for you, "The Sims 4" makers have included a number of cheats in the game, and there are quite a few commands that will set your skill levels to a desired number with just the right keystrokes, as IGN points out.

To achieve that feat, you must first open a command box by holding down the "Shift," "Ctrl" and "C" keys at the same time. You will be prompted to enter some text, and your first command should be "testingcheats true." This magic word basically expands your cheating options beyond the basic to your more complex desires.

In order to adjust a given skill level, you can then resort to the standard command "stats.set_skill_level Major_" -- which also needs to be entered in the text box (without the quotation marks). Before you hit enter, you need to specify the ability you wish to acquire.

The list of options here is quite long and includes: "Fishing," "Mischief," "Guitar," "Reaping," "Programming," "Gardening," "GourmetCooking," "Comedy," "Charisma," "Writing," "VideoGaming," "Violin," "RocketScience," "Painting," "Piano," "Logic," "Handiness," "HomestyleCooking," "Bartending" and "Fitness." (Make sure you preserve the spacing -- or lack thereof -- and ignore the commas and quotation marks.)

One more step is required before you can hit the "Enter" key and let the magic take place: You need to tell "The Sims 4" just how good you want to be at your selected skill. In order to do that, you type in a space and then a number between one and 10. If you wanted to prepare a perfectly tender filet mignon, for example, your complete command would read "stats.set_skill_level GourmetCooking 10" (again, without the quotation marks).

Finally, for some more general abilities, the basic command is "stats.set_skill_level Skill_" and you complete it with "Fitness," "Social," "Motor," "Creativity" and "Mental" (no commas or quotation marks -- you know the drill).

So sit back, relax and let the learning take care of itself -- at least in "The Sims 4."

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