Also these days I'd heavily debate your premise- i think exams are more of a test of memory and being able to game the system especially in the UK where you are given a test bank of past papers which are almost identical to exam papers. I was a terrible student until 2 weeks prior to the final exam where I grinded maybe 6 or 7 past papers and at least 3 out of 10 questions were carbon copied from previous papers. I would not be able to approach a problem that fit outside of the structure of the problems in the exam papers in the real world.