I have always had a fairly easy time with multiple choice answer tests. Most of the time, they are poorly designed, such that often there are two obvious wrong answers and a 50/50 just assuming 4 options. If one then applies related knowledge or concepts, further narrowing the guess, likely to get at least a 75%. I too have been fascinated by this and looked into exploring why. Intuition seems as good of an explanation as I can think to call it too. I could have tought most of my undergrad program and didn’t apply myself for my MBA with a 3.95 GPA. I don’t think that it makes me or your friend necessarily smarter, just the way that each person processes and retrieves information. Also most of economics is made up, so that helps…just not for Modeling… lol