This can happen. In India, you have this tradition of 'notes sharing'. Basically the course instructor circulates around lecture notes(Which is basically a highly trimmed version of the text book), all students do is mug up the whole thing and write it down in exams.

The person who gets it 100% right generally scores the highest. If you are some who does it a little differently by thinking and working your way through the course, you can be silently penalized for trying to be smarter than everyone else.