Picture-Perfect Score for Teen: A 1600 on SAT

Brian Naranjo’s perfect score of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test has been the talk of Pacifica High School this week.

But the UCLA-bound senior, who had the flu when he took the college entrance examination Dec. 1, describes his rare feat as “no big deal.”

Naranjo, 17, was one of only 10 students in the United States to earn the highest possible score on the test in 1990, said district spokesman Alan Trudell. Last year, about 1.8 million students took the test, which is the most common examination required for college admittance.

“I was sick, so I thought it might hurt my chances,” Naranjo said Wednesday. “But once I got in there, I just tuned everything else out and really focused on the test.”

The national average for the test’s math section was 476 while the average for the verbal portion was 424. Naranjo scored 800 on both, the only Garden Grove student in at least 10 years to do so well, Trudell said.

“I really wasn’t expecting such a high score,” said Naranjo, who plans to major in physics when he gets to college. “I was confident during the math part of the test, but the reading part was starting to get really boring. It was like reading about the history of Milk Duds.”

Naranjo said he hopes his high score will lead to college scholarships, but he is wary of the public attention his accomplishment has brought.

“To people who know me real well, this has been no big deal,” he said. “But other people are treating me like some sort of test guru and it gets sort of old after a while.”

Naranjo has shunned most media attention, refusing to be photographed for newspaper articles and turning down requests from television stations for on-camera interviews, much to the dismay of school officials.

“We keep telling him that it may not be a big deal to him, but it really is a big deal,” said Pacifica High School counselor Al Spencer.

This reluctance doesn’t surprise Dan Chikami, a friend of Naranjo’s since the seventh grade.

“He’s a very reserved and serious person, but he’s also really funny,” said Chikami, who often plays heavy metal music with Naranjo on their electric guitars after school.

Naranjo’s unusual sense of humor was demonstrated when he was asked about his high school grade-point average.

“Well, on Earth it’s 3.6 but on Jupiter it’s 4.0,” he said in a serious tone, before chuckling.

Despite his academic success, Naranjo said he tries to make time for other interests. In addition to his interest in music, Naranjo has played on the school’s water polo team for the past two years. He also recently took up juggling and he practices using 2-liter plastic soda bottles.

He also has a close group of friends at school who share his interests in computers, math, physics and science fiction.

“This group of kids are interested in how the world works, and they don’t follow blindly,” said physics teacher Beverly Cox. “They are definite individuals.”

To teachers and classmates at Pacifica, Naranjo’s test-taking abilities are well-known.

“He doesn’t appear to try all that hard, but when his tests come back, they are usually all A’s,” said Chikami, 17.

In what turned out to be an indication of things to come, Naranjo also earned a perfect score last year when he took the SAT’s American History Achievement test and Math Level II test, which are also used for college admittance.

Also, during his junior year at Pacifica, he scored so well on the PSAT, a practice SAT test for students, that he became a National Merit Scholar semifinalist.

“We knew that this was well within his limits,” Chikami said. “We sort of laughed when he first told us his score, but we didn’t question it for a second. We all sort of just shrugged it off and so did he. I don’t think he considers it a great accomplishment.”