[aik]

I've aced a fair amount of exams in my lifetime, and knowing what I know now about "knowing", learning and understanding, acing a majority of those exams were in fact a TERRIBLE indication of the amount (and quality) of learning that had taken place. For example, all those A's in my electromagnetism and thermodynamics courses, or calc courses -- completely unwarranted. I would say about 95% of it was mindless memorization of formulas and the application of the formulas mostly through the usage of algebra. Testing/performing on deeper conceptual understanding = virtually non-existant (which I can easily prove to myself by the lack of understanding I have at the moment when I actually try to apply the concepts).