On SAT, ACT, they answered with perfection

Every year thousands of high school students across the country take college entrance exams. Some the SAT; others the ACT; some take both. Some even get perfect scores.

In metro Atlanta, five students accomplished that feat. Here are their stories:

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Abubakar Abid was a seventh-grader when he first took the SAT. He scored 1990.

Two years later,he took it again, bumping up the results 180 points. On his third try as a sophomore, he scored 2290.

Not even then did the Walton High School senior believe he could get a perfect score.

The oldest of four children born to two physicians, Abid loaded up on Advanced Placement and honors courses.

“That really helped in the critical reading and building my vocabulary,” he said, "but it wasn’t a one-time study session. It was courses I’ve taken throughout school.”

As far back as he can remember, Abid said, his parents had encouraged him to be curious and take advantage of every opportunity to learn He wanted badly to get into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A perfect SAT score should help.

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Boyang Niu’s sister had set the standard in his Johns Creek household long before he entered high school.

The Yale University medical student scored 1560 out of 1600 on the SAT.

And although Niu's parents never lectured the 17-year-old Northview High School senior about doing his best, there was just a kind of unspoken rule.

Niu's best, he said, was partly the result of his friends and their competitive nature and partly due to his own preparation, namely a tough curriculum.

He also volunteered in the community and played the violin in the school and with the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra. Reading was a favorite pastime.

To get ready for the exam, Niu said he took his sister’s advice and studied the 1,000 or so vocabulary flashcards she’d left behind.

Other times, he said, “I’d just run through the practice tests, focusing on one subject at a time.”

In the winter of his junior year, Niu took the test for the first time. He scored 2210.

The following summer he took it again, careful to treat it as ordinary and avoid stress.

On June 23, the day after Niu got his driver’s license, he woke up around 9 a.m. and logged onto the College Board’s website and found out about the perfect score.

“I didn’t tell my parents,” he said. “I wanted them to find out on their own.”

When they asked, he told them “it’s good news.”

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Weston Awtry sailed through Mill Creek High school, taking one Advanced Placement class after another.

When it came time to take the college entrance exams, he figured he wouldn’t do too shabbily.

“As long as I’ve had something to eat and I’m not hungry, I can focus pretty well,” said Awtry of Hoschton.

He got a 32 out of 36 on the ACT; 2130 on the SAT; solid scores but not quite good enough.

Awtry, 17, had dreamed of becoming an Auburn University Tiger since he was little tagging along with his father, an Auburn grad. He was hoping to enter as a Presidential Scholar, but he needed at least a 33 on the ACT.

Still, he said, “I just kind of blew it off.”

When he got ready to give it another try, he didn’t dare do it on an empty stomach.

The first time, Awtry said, his mother, Christy, suggested Chick-fil-A.

Maybe he’d try chicken biscuits again.

“That’s my secret,” he said, laughing.

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For most of her high school career, Joan Bedinger has performed above the pack.

In addition to being a member of the school’s International Baccalaureate Program, the 17-year-old Campbell High School senior was recently named a co-valedictorian of her class.

An only child of a stay-at-home mom and technical support manager from Smyrna, Bedinger says she owes much of her success to her teachers for challenging “me to stay dedicated and interested in learning.”

It was with that spirit that Bedinger faced the SAT.

But instead of signing up for expensive prep classes, Bedinger opted to check out books from the library.

“A few weeks before the test I did timed practice tests to get used to the format,” she said.

On test day Bedinger let her parents do the driving while she sat quietly in the back seat half listening to Regina Spektor, half sleeping.

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During the test, Bedinger was purposeful and focused, but not necessarily “set on a perfect score.”

When Bedinger got the results, she said she “was really surprised and glad, of course, that I didn’t have to take it again.”

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Growing up, Kevin Sun was like any other kid. He preferred playing outdoors and mindlessly watching television any day to, say, reading a book.

But when it came to his school work, Sun learned early on to take it seriously.

“My parents were a big influence,” he said. “They always pushed me to work hard and not slack.”

Sun, 16, is a junior at Johns Creek High School and has maintained a 100-plus average even as he loaded up on Advanced Placement classes and extracurricular activities.

In addition to playing the violin, Sun is an avid runner and swimmer and volunteers with his school’s Key and Asian-American Leo clubs.

Those activities, he said, explain why he decided to take the SAT exam this summer.

“I have cross country in the fall and swim in the winter,” Sun said. “It made sense to just get it over with.”

Three months before the June exam Sun enrolled in a small tutoring group, where he picked up some reading strategies and went through practice tests.

“I was pretty confident going into the test,” he said. “It was just a matter of putting in the effort and focusing.”

Sun was up early one morning getting ready to head to cross country practice recently when he decided to check his results.

“I kept looking at it,” he said of his score. “I screamed ‘2400.’ ”

Sun said he had to get his parents to verify what he thought he saw before he could fully believe his eyes.