For high school students, achieving a perfect score on the SAT is like winning the academic lottery.
The rare feat means handsome offers from selective colleges, instant accolades and gape-mouthed reactions from friends and relatives.
“I was aiming for the best score possible, but I didn’t ever think that was going to be a 2400,” said Haroon Alam, a senior at Walton High School in Cobb County. He took the test in June.
“Sometimes you just get that question you know. And sometimes you don’t.”
Some of the metro Atlanta students who captured the elusive score of 2400 offered Atlanta Journal-Constitution readers an array of tips for those looking to ace the college entrance exam, next scheduled Nov. 8 — from purchasing study guides to hiring tutors and taking SAT prep courses and using test-taking skills gleaned from classroom learning.
Nationally, less than one percent of the nearly 1.7 million students who recently took the SAT scored 2400. Of the 583 students with a perfect score, 11 were Georgians, according to the College Board, which administers the exam.
Audy Mulia, 18, who attended Alpharetta High School, took the SAT twice before earning 2400 on the third try. The score gave her the confidence to apply to top-tier colleges, landing her an acceptance into Stanford University where she’s a freshman.
“I didn’t pore through every page (of the College Board’s study guide) but read through the strategy tips – how to choose answers, how to eliminate wrong answers, how to manage your time,” said Mulia, adding that her experience taking AP and other exams also helped her ace the SAT.
Cobb County’s Walton High School had two students who scored a perfect 2400, Alam and Sanket Mehta, 17. The seniors plan to apply to University of Georgia and Georgia Tech and are considering other colleges as well, they said.
Mehta earned a perfect score the first time he took the SAT last fall. To prepare, he also bought the College Board’s official study book, filled with several practice tests, which he took at home.
“I think that definitely helped, setting up that test-day environment where you’re in a closed room and you just have a paper in front of you with a pencil and then 3 or 4 hours to finish” the test, he said. Mehta said he practiced for close to three months before taking the SAT. His classes at Walton, particularly those in math and English, also prepared him for the test, he said.
“All the skills you need for the SAT … we covered in the classroom in 9th, 10th and 11th grade,” he said. “That was definitely a boost. I think Walton prepared me more than any other tutor could have prepared me. Practice tests were just something that I think tightened the bolts.”
Georgia’s latest SAT results show a slight dip, with education officials attributing the decline to more students taking the exam.
Georgia’s overall score dropped seven points to 1445 as participation nudged up to 77 percent of students, according to data released earlier this month by the College Board. Georgia typically has one of the highest participation rates in the country and usually ranks near the bottom among states on SAT scores.
In Cobb County — which had a nearly 80 percent participation rate and an overall SAT score of 1515 — education leaders help prepare students for the test by daily sharing an “SAT Question of the Day” as well as SAT test prep programs, which are offered for an extra cost, said Ehsan Kattoula, director of accountability and research for Cobb schools.
At Gwinnett’s Brookwood High School, senior Ryan Chen credits its “word of the day” with helping him attain a 2400 on the SAT last November. Chen, who is taking a distance learning class at Georgia Tech, also read past SAT exams to get ready for the test.
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