Dissatisfied Texas Student Scores a Perfect Grade of 1,600 on His SAT

Almost perfect wasn’t good enough for 17-year-old Daniel Pak, so he tried again and made a flawless score of 1,600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Pak, a senior at Hillcrest High School in north Dallas, had a perfect score last year on his National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, and he repeated the accomplishment this year on the SAT.

Pak scored 1,540 on his first attempt this year, hardly a bad score, but he decided to try again.

“Most people seemed to think 1,540 was pretty good--my counselor didn’t want me to take the test again,” Pak said. “But my father did, because he’s big on the SAT, and he promised me a car for a 1,600. I intend to keep him to his word,” Pak said Monday.

The SAT is a two-part exam, with sections on verbal and math skills, each scored on a scale of 200 to 800.

Tom Ewing, a spokesman for the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., which administers the test, said nine students got perfect scores in the 1985-86 school year, up from three in 1984-85 and five in 1983-84.

“It is rare to get a perfect 1,600 score, but it appears it is getting a little less rare,” Ewing said.

About 1% of the 1.5 million students who take the SAT nationally score above 1,500, sponsors say.