Honesty the best Policy?

How far would one go to achieve his cause? In a recent article in The Daily, which is the daily newspaper of the University of Washington, writers interviewed medical students who cheat to pass/do well in exams. And when asked why they do it, they simply replied: "I want to help people." Today there was an incident which I personally didn't feel very comfortable about. It involved a little bit of social irresponsibility and dishonesty. I was urked by what happened, and hence the inspiration for this post. In the first example, the student cheated to achieve his dream and his goal, which was to help people and save lives by successfully graduating from med school. Well, this is certainly a noble and respected dream. But however, the path to graduation is a grey one as he cheated to pass his exam. Hence, would one consider the student as a a morally upright or downright(u get my pt) person? Personally, I am still in a dilemma regarding this situation. In the second scenario, how far would one go to save money? To the extent of undermining one's character and principles? I can be thrifty, but I definitely wouldn't go down to a level like this just to save a litle bit of money to fuel my leisure expenditure. Being in a foreign land and having only so much finances, being thrifty is definitely on everyone's mind. But unless one has a noble cause that would stupefy other people(like me) and cause them to go into deep thought, honesty is still the best policy around.