As the other user posted, practicing for tests are extremely important. I grew up middle class, got an average score on my tests (but I did really well in math)
My wife, upper middle class, took entire weeks of courses and scored higher than me on everything. But I am better than her at math for sure.
While engineering school was hard, I did think quite a bit of it was pure participation testing.
I used to think this was wrong, until I got into engineering.. Sure there is the rare math problem, but most of the difficult part was: "Are you willing to fly to mexico and be awake at 3am when the parts are made?"
I might be downplaying though... I did calc 1 at a job.
I know a ~55ish year old lady who is beautiful, but looks 55. I see her adjusting to her new reality and its painful. I imagine she used to be able to get away with being mean and sarcastic because she was so hot.
Now it just causes office fights. "I wont work with X" is something Ive heard.
The interesting part is that I originally only worked with her on the phone, so I always thought she was mean... Then I saw her in person and everything clicked.