Earnings depend on how many needs you fulfill, not on exam scores.

Just because you scored higher than me doesn't mean I owe you money, right? I only pay you when you fulfill my needs, right?

Fulfilling needs = making money.

As a top scholar, at the celebration banquet, the teacher praises you because your exam success helped them hit their KPI and earn a bonus; the county magistrate praises you because education is one of the county's evaluation metrics. By boosting your reputation, maybe someone will buy a house—catching a bit of your academic aura—and the magistrate's land sells, salaries get paid. That's what they're thinking about. So, as you can see, you're still fulfilling others' needs.

Purely hard grades are useless. All actions must ultimately come down to fulfilling others' needs if you want to thrive.

The most important thing in life is whether you have a product—that thing that condenses your lifetime of thought. That is the trace that you existed, that you lived. A life without a product is, in fact, living for others.

The best kind of life is when I know every day that I'm living for myself, that I've become myself, that I've become a product, and my product embodies my thoughts.
From here on, the paths diverge.
If your product can also fulfill others' needs, you'll make money.
If it can't, it becomes mere self-entertainment—you'd better hope you have a rich dad to fund you for life.

The highest form of living:

Embody your own thoughts while building a product that incidentally fulfills others' needs, live thoroughly and passionately, and along the way, earn enough money to last a lifetime.
This is the highest form of living.