I’m a test prep tutor who has seen a number of very intelligent students get surprisingly low scores on the SAT or ACT. In my work, I use only the official College Board or Wiley study guides and my students do at least three or more full tests before test date, under timed conditions.
I typically estimate a student’s score after they’ve completed three tests. Of course, I never say “you’ll get x score.” I do say “based on these three or more tests, it seems that you might score approximately 1400…” I’m deliberately ambiguous. Still, it is surprising if a student doesn’t get a score near what their practice tests have shown. I do think that some kids freeze up or get too anxious on test day.
I have some really smart kids who simply overthink everything on the tests. They are more prone to doing this if they view the test as being full of trick questions. I have to help these students look at the tree and not the whole forest.
The issue is that the tests are so unlike anything they do for school. They are very artificial. If these tests are to be relevant, why not just make them IQ tests? Surely it would be harder to prep for them, and colleges would get what they want: choosing the smartest kids. Combined with all the other stuff used in holistic review, that seems reasonable.