I'm not sure how you will take this, not to bring your hopes up or down, but you must realize the gravity of your situation here.
I absolutely hated the fact that some people cheated on tests during school whilst some students wouldn't go that far and risk their academic standing or even be pushed back a year to repeat a course. We all have our reasons but from an ethical standpoint, I don't know how much I agree with your actions.
Then again my opinion is irrelevant here on what you did; I am no academic police here. What I can tell you for a fact is an academic misconduct is part of your permanent record. When we look at candidates we look at them as a whole. We can forgive and forget a lot of things (I would say our program is very nice in this aspect). GPA isn't all that important amongst all the usual stuff we look at. But a misconduct is something we have no room for. If you cheated on this exam there is nothing to say you didn't on others (i'm not saying you did but how can you prove otherwise now that you have been caught once - admit to cheating on other exams?).
It's hard to think of it from a different perspective (if you were to do so) but ask yourself what an RPD would think about when he sees something like this: "If he cheated on an exam what if he/she cheated with his staffing hours. What else have they cheated on? Can I trust this person?"
I'm playing the devil's advocate here but really it's not the best thing to have on your record, ever. There is no need to cheat if you are prepared. If you are not prepared improve your processes. Ask for help. Reach out to your instructors. You pay a lot of money every year and you are ruining yourself financially with your education - make the most out of it and don't mess it up.
Sorry if I sound preachy but I really don't think you should underestimate how bad these things are.