It’s currently university exam season in my country. My roommate has quite literally not come to university at all the entire semester except for mandatory stuff; hasn’t studied at all, doesn’t even have the coursework, 0 notebooks or folders, etc. We’re more than half done with the exam session and he got 10/10 (max grade) at each exam. He just read through my coursework the day before the exam for a bit & that was it. When I ask him he says he uses intuition, logic and reading between the lines to understand the “patterns”. I just don’t understand how you can use “intuition” for microeconomics & math applied in economics for example. I know for a fact he doesn’t cheat cause in his mind cheating is too much effort.
People in this thread are throwing around the term “smarter” a lot and I think we should avoid that. How quick you pick things up might be an indicator for being smart but it is only one aspect. The following are generalizations and there are always exceptions so keep that in mind.
What you will find in life is a lot of the people like you describe have generally shallow knowledge of a subject but are capable of ramping up quickly and filling out that deeper knowledge as needed. Meanwhile, the folks who tend to take longer and study more retain more of the knowledge and are more capable at using it without supplemental data or analysis.
It is the difference between knowing an answer and knowing enough to quickly find or intuit the answer.