College entry and the stress of the SATs tend to go hand-in-hand and one high school student from Philadelphia won’t have to worry about the latter. Cameron Clarke, clocked a perfect score of 2400 on the standardized test.
Clarke, a senior at Germantown Academy is one of 360 people earning a perfect score on the test, which was taken by more than 1.66 million students in 2012.
The high school senior’s feat, more noteworthy given the stats that over half of the students in his city drop out, came courtesy of his second try at the test. The first time he scored 2190. “I put in a lot of work,” the 18-year-old said. “I took a prep class with some of my friends, and I did a lot of practice tests from a book, but that only prepares you so much. The difference between getting a couple points lower is just focus. You can screw up or mess up on the smallest thing.”
In spite of his preparation, for Clarke—who scored 151 on his IQ tests at just 4 years old— there were other factors at play. “I just feel on that particular day, I was focused and I got kind of lucky, I guess, that I didn’t make any mistakes.”
Clarke’s dream school is Princeton University, a goal that he might be on step closer to achieving thanks to his test scores and good grades.
