THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511190220
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: GLOUCESTER LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
A Gloucester High School junior who helped build a prize-winning battery-powered car has scored a rare 1,600 points on the Scholastic Assessment Test used for college admission.
``I thought it was in my grasp,'' Chris Clements said of the maximum score, earned by about seven of every 10,000 students who take the two-part exam.
Clements, 16, ranks 10th in his class of 456 students. He has a 4.3 grade-point average, earning above a 4.0 by taking advanced courses.
He doesn't yet know where he wants to attend college. But he's sure he wants to make an impact with his life.
``I'd really like to give something to the world that will last a long time after I'm dead,'' he said. ``I don't know what my gift would be yet. That's what I want to look for, that opportunity.''
Clements earned a perfect score despite an imperfect answer sheet.
``I missed two,'' he said. ``One of them, on the verbal, I knew as soon as I got home. On the math one, I don't know what I did wrong.''
Janice Gams, a spokeswoman for The College Board, the test administrator, said ``recentering'' scores to correct a computation distortion increased scores at the upper end of the scale.
Charles Clements, Chris' father, said neither he, a helicopter maintenance instructor at Fort Eustis, nor his wife, Susan, an elementary school reading specialist, has pushed Chris to excel.
``He's done well at everything he's taken on,'' he said.
But Chris said he might not take on the test again, since students who max it lose an average 47 points on each part with a second try. by CNB