That's not hacking or faking it, any more than shipping a couple of products using the some pointers from stackoverflow. If you show you're actually able to stick with a thing and finish it to a sufficient level of quality, that's kind of the point. Developing a deep understanding of esoteric topics can be fun and intellectually satisfying but is usually a tiny part of most careers, even the fun and satisfying ones.
You mean shallowly enough just to pass a few tests that can be easily hacked by accessing the previous year's? You can definitely fake it until you get the paper, I've seen that so many times.