keyword stuffing but yet ranking higher?

We're doing a competition in class to see who can get their page to rank #1 on Google. I have read so many articles, books, forums, and have optimized my site pretty well, but I am lost as to why my classmate's site ranks higher than mine. She's #1 and I'm #3. She jumped to #1 from page 2, which is really boggling my mind.

After comparing the two, using all sorts of SEO tools, the only difference I found was that her site is stuffed with the keyword. To make things clear, it's a made-up word so in the beginning of the semester, no results were found on Google.

Some are saying keyword density doesn't matter anymore, some are saying that it does. They're also saying keyword stuffing will cause you to rank lower... so how is it that her site is ranking higher?

According to one of the tools I used, my keyword is found 35 times in 1534 words (density: 2.28% prominence: 57.23%). Her site, with the same keyword, is found 56 times in 930 words (density: 6.02% prominence: 56.67%). On top of that, I have a PR5 site linking to me and she doesn't.

Is there something I'm missing? Do you have any suggestions for me? Can anyone shed some light on this?

SEO is driving me nuts!

Check the keyword density if you analyze the pages which are ranking, not the entire site.

The keyword density does matters..... but do look her content also. Maybe she has more information in the 900+ words.

Only counting the backlinks is not the solution. Watch out how she uses the social media, because girls are very good at bringing traffic from social media. Along with the backlinks try to bring some referral traffic to your site, this will boost your ranking.

And yes... these girls not seo always drive boys to nuts.....

I think keywords stuffing does not matter too much. The originality and uniqueness of content does matter a lot.