I would agree that it's accessible, but this doesn't make it any less alien. Most people I knew in high school (at a non-elite school) were barely even consciou

I would agree that it's accessible, but this doesn't make it any less alien. Most people I knew in high school (at a non-elite school) were barely even conscious of the fact that they would be taking the SATs 9 months before they did (they knew that it was something they would have to do, but it wasn't concrete enough to cause them to do anything about it). For most, studying at all was something that only the more ambitious kids did. I'm not sure if there was a single student in my graduating class who spent as much time studying as you did, including some students who went to competitive colleges (there might have been but they didn't talk about it, the fact that people do this wasn't part of the collective consciousness). Again, I'm just saying that for many students, reading this article would expose them to something that they haven't really been exposed to so far.