> The ACT is taken by college aspiring high schoolers.
Not true, it's taken by a self-selecting minority of college-aspiring high schoolers. The SAT-taking population is far, far more representative than the ACT-taking population. In isolation, that actually makes an ACT percentile better than it would appear, but there are other effects around.
In 2005 22 was the 62nd percentile among ACT takers nationwide (21 was the 55th). Assuming ACT takers are mostly representative of the population, this girl is smarter than 55-62% of US high school students, roughly as smart as 0-7% of them, and dumber than the remaining 38%. For a college student, this is not an inspiring figure.
> If 22 is top 10% of her whole school, she had some sort of personal cleverness to overcome her near-completely unintellectual community.
No, the top 7% figure is for GPA. And you don't need to overcome anything to be at the top of a group that isn't competing for the position. For any group, there will always be a top 10%.
This comparison is to the wrong cohort. She was among the top of her high school cohort. That's the point -- among a pool of people in the community he was raised in, she rose above the pack, didn't come through a culture the tests are optimized to select for.
The ACT is taken by college aspiring high schoolers.
If 22 is top 10% of her whole school, she had some sort of personal cleverness to overcome her near-completely unintellectual community.