What motive would you need beside "a higher score gets me into better schools"? Surely someone smart enough to get a perfect SAT score can figure that out pretty easily.
I guess what i meant was why gp had this motivation while their peers didn't, what is the difference.
Clearly nature. No reason to keep this as an elephant in the room.
Late replying, but I readily admit that supportive parents and a school subculture that valued academics were both factors. I didn’t mean to suggest that I single-handedly pulled myself up by my bootstraps. But the SAT was the main path I had to stand out in applications as a public-school-educated person from a rural place you’ve never heard of.