Yeah, they take them because they get high. Believing in things that are unsupported by empirical evidence is in the domain of religion, not science.

You can't really get high much on prescription-level dosages - that quickly gets tricky logistically and prohibitively expensive. People who look for highs go to the street for a reason.

You pointed out that students abuse stimulants for finals in spite of the evidence, were you just expanding on what I originally said, or is that meant to serve as counter-evidence implying that the research is wrong?

Regardless, I'm not saying it's a cheap or practical to get high this way, especially over the long term. People probably try stimulants because folk wisdom tells them that they'll get better grades. Then they get high and they feel like a superman from the dopamine rush, so they keep using them because they think it's materially improving their grades but really they're just getting high.