Indeed. The whole premise of the activity is that they are highly correlated.

The imposition of a normal distribution is done ad-hoc at the population level. All it says is that if scores were normally distributed, then "people would be so-and-so comparable".

Almost all assumptions of this method are false.

Any time anyone mentions the central limit theorem in applied stats is a warning sign for pseudoscience. If reality existed at the end of the CLT, it would be in heat death.