12-Year-Old Boy Wows Educators With Test Scores

A 12-year-old Camarillo boy was among three top scorers in California under age 13 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and has been honored by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Jeffrey A. Smith was among 11 preteens nationally who were cited by the university for scoring at least 700 on the math portion and at least 630 on the verbal section of the test, said Angela James, talent search coordinator for the Johns Hopkins Center for the Advancement of Academically Talented Youth.

Smith scored 1,360 of a possible 1,600 points on the exam, which measures a student’s college preparedness.

“It was pretty tricky,” Smith said of the test, which has intimidated many high school juniors and seniors seeking high scores for college admission.

“I had the most problems on reading comprehension but felt pretty comfortable on the science section,” Smith said. He said his only preparation was taking the practice test in the SAT registration booklet.

A seventh-grade student at Mesa Union School, Smith took the SAT in January with more than 46,000 other gifted students in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Johns Hopkins asked schools to choose their best students from among those who scored in the top 3% of standardized achievement or aptitude tests to take the SAT along with high school students, James said. Other universities conducted similar programs in the other states.

Smith, who scored 630 on the verbal portion and 730 in math, won two $100 merit scholarships--one each in math and English--to be used toward accelerated summer programs that Johns Hopkins offers through several California colleges, including Redlands University in the Los Angeles area, James said.

Clay Smith, Jeffrey’s father, said he knew that Jeffrey is “pretty smart on the local level,” but the family was pleasantly surprised that he had done so well nationally. Jeffrey has won his school’s spelling bee for the past three years and also placed first in math and science earlier this year in the Camarillo Academic Olympics.

He also participates in track and field and is an accomplished clarinetist who plays at local functions with a six-piece clarinet ensemble whose other members are high school students.

Dennis J. Convery, superintendent of the one-school, 350-student Mesa Union Elementary School District, said Smith “excels in just about everything.”

Convery said the district is proud because Smith has been a student there since he was in kindergarten. “We feel that the learning that’s taken place here, and being able to help him reach his potential and keep him challenged, is a reflection on the staff,” he said.

Smith said he has profited from the district’s small size. “I like it,” he said. “You get lots of personal involvement from the teachers, and you know everybody at the school.”

Smith said he would probably wait until his junior year in high school before taking the test again, and would try to score even higher.

Despite his high SAT scores, Smith said he would not try to skip a grade or two and graduate ahead of his classmates.

“Oh no,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to do that.”