Long time, now, since I was in the theory game ...
Two of my favourite students were -
(a) a comparatively gifted bookwork student who, while having more than adequate competence to do it all himself in a doodle, chose to run the classroom race. A great pity he was the radio operator on the Bristol Freighter mishap (SJQ May 75) as he was going to have a career in aviation which would have given me considerable pleasure to observe ... c'est la vie, I guess.
(b) a lovely chap, of chequered past, who, while a fine pilot, had to work his tail off to get through all the theory papers and always needed to watch his pennies carefully throughout the exercise. Ended up a well-regarded T&C airline pilot.
I considered myself fortunate to count both as friends .. doesn't matter which way one goes about the task of getting one's subjects .. certainly the classroom work does make it easier albeit at the expense of some dollars. As others above have observed, the important thing is to acquire a reasonable knowledge of the subject as the first aim and then knock over the exams as the followup.