When I was in graduate school earning my engineering degree, I remember reading an article about a physics class at one of the top schools (MIT, CalTech, in that class) where the professor gave a concepts test at the end of the semester, with quite shameful results.
This was an exam that didn't use any equations because a lot of people are good at memorizing equations and just putting in the knowns until the 1 unknown pops up and solve for it without actually knowing anything about what the equation says. My experience is that there are an awful lot of physics, math, and engineering students who get good grades this way but know very little of what is actually happening.
So many students (A & B included) don't connect the concept that you make your car go faster by increasing its acceleration (hence, the correct name of that pedal, the accelerator). Or that when you pedal your bike faster, you are increasing the acceleration on the bike. They don't get that the new increased speed is the result of a rebalance of the new acceleration and drag forces. They memorize F=ma, but don't actually know what it means.
It is one of the toughest things to overcome -- learning that your instincts are wrong. This is true in the physics classroom, and this is true in golf. Higher speed is the result of increased acceleration, and longer drives are the rest of not using your hands, etc. You have to fight to overcome your first instincts of how position, velocity, and acceleration are related in physics and your first hit instincts in golf.
At the end of the article, there were two main conclusions. 1) That even though you can achieve grades of As and Bs in physics classes, it doesn't mean that you actually know anything and 2) that the way classes are typically taught (and I'd add graded and tested) isn't working all that well because they don't adequately test if the students do know basic concepts or not.
In my own experience, there were several students I graduated with who had almost perfect 4.0 GPAs who I would never want to work at the same plant as they do because while they were excellent test-takers and homework-doers, they really had no idea of what the equations they were using were saying and vice-versa there were several students I graduated with who were average to below average students who weren't very good at the mathematical side of the classes, but who always had a very good grasp of what was occurring physically (like in the lab or something similar).