Early on a crisp fall morning, over 3.6 million high school sophomores and junior sat down to take the PSAT/NMSQT test. Typically just over two hours, students use their math and writing skills to answer the rigorous questions.

Remarkably, La Salle junior Derek Wong is one of about 100 of those 3.6 million who scored a perfect 1520 on this standardized test. You’ve most certainly seen Derek in the halls between his 4 AP classes, in the library playing chess with La Salle’s chess team, and on the tennis courts during the spring.

For many, this type of good news would send them jumping up and down, overjoyed and even boastful, but not Derek. He received his test score in the middle of his AP English 3 class, remaining his usual calm and collected self, only muttering a quiet “Oh” to himself.  

Derek did spend the weeks before the exam preparing and studying by taking 12 practice tests. His advice for studying for the PSAT is “[to] take the practice tests because they are the types of questions you’ll see on the actual thing”, also noting that it’s hard to prepare for the test in other ways due to the particular question types and styles.

Since Derek is a junior, he is now eligible to be a semi finalist in the National Merit Scholarship contest, which provides a full ride scholarship to any 4 year college of his choice. Derek has done some research into this, and says he will need to take the SAT in the spring in order to confirm that his score was not a fluke, and also fill out an application. Even if he is not awarded the main scholarship, Derek will receive a commendation for his outstanding performance, as well as having the knowledge that he is in an exceptionally small minority of students who aced the test.

Derek has begun to think ahead to college, but has not given a lot of thought to which one he wants to go to yet; however, this achievement has not changed Derek’s life goal of going to college to become an oncologist.

Reflecting on his performance, Derek said, “[I] don’t really feel different; I’m still getting a B in [Mr. Krantz’s] English class after all.”