Following the "good" path, is it really worth it?

There are two types of students in these world, those whose aim of life is 'pre-exam suggestions' and those who sweat out their days trying to finish the whole syllabus manually.

Theoretically, the 2nd type is considered the 'good' ones and they are assured by the common dialogue "you'll gain the true knowledge, while those who read suggestions will only pass, but never do great things in life".
Sound assuring, but does practical life agree?

No, not necessarily... on the last day of academic session, no one will remember who studied xerox notes and who read the books. All that'd be visible would the better marks, not how they got it.
Yes, I sound hypocrite, but I've seen, seeing and will see such instances come true over and over again.

On the day of entrance exams, no one gives a damn if you are a good guy or genius student, all you gotta do is score the marks, no matter if you manage it from peeking over your shoulders, or tick some MCQ riding on your luck. Or you could just be a good guy, do the sums yourself and miss the answer by a whisker (yes, entrance exams' MCQ answers are set like that, all 4 answers will be so much alike that someone will get the wrong ans by a silly mistake in last step, while someone will reach the right answer by doing the whole process wrong)

I don't mean everyone cheats, but yes, the option is as much viable as studying hard.

There was a time when the proverbs were formulated, people were simple and innocent and the world was much simpler a place to live in...and there's this present world, which is a quite different scenario. It's pretty hard to decide if those proverbs still hold good, they need to be modified, or discarded altogether.

Maybe today the "Survival of the fittest" is a more important concept, and we need to adapt to the changes. But do we really have to stop following the good path to be fittest? Or is our definition of "good" and "bad" is flawed itself?

Given that Darwin's theory can't be disproven, I will just stick to my concept of "good" and carry on hoping to discover something new in the concept of "fittest"