^^ this
I just heard on the radio that bribing kids on standardized tests (i.e. money for each correct answer) resulted in better scores 
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-11-20/how-us-kids-might-have-performed-better-in-math
Re: mapping maslow to college entrance criteria, it’s interesting there are NIH studies showing that SAT is more predictive of college gpa the “higher the ability of the student”. Their method was to observe colleges with high avg SAT scores and compare them to colleges with lower avg SAT scores. They looked at the correlation of SAT with college gpa and found it stronger in the colleges with the higher SAT scores.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3090148/
I don’t know much about this study so can’t comment further, but it seems to hint that SATs are better used to separate the upper levels of the pyramid.