When I did my ATPLs (finished summer 2015), it was a real pain to work so hard to properly understand all the material (even as a Physics undergrad) and yet get significantly lower averages across most exams than those candidates who simply "bashed the question bank". There were only one or two exceptions (GNav especially).
Doesn't exactly fill me with confidence in the ability of scores of candidates that will go on to sit in the RHS of airliners. Glad to see this is all changing.