How does a student who scores a perfect 1,600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test spend part of his summer?
Teaching.
Robert Steckler, 16, of Jupiter, is spending three weeks of his summer helping soon-to-be high school freshmen through an accelerated program he attended four years ago.
But in between his temporary teaching assignment, he attempts to deal with the achievement of scoring 1,600.
``When you say it, it sounds so strange,`` Steckler said.
``I get a lot of looks from people like, `Wow!``` he said.
Steckler, who will be a senior at Suncoast High School in Riviera Beach, plans to attend Harvard University.
He said the importance of his perfect score has not sunk in yet.
``I thought I would be jumping around, but I have not ... I am kind of in shock,`` he said.
Kevin Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Educational Testing Service based in Princeton, New Jersey, said of the 1.8 million students who take the test a year, four to 12 students achieve a perfect score.
``You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than scoring 1,600 on the SAT,`` said Gonzalez, who works for the organization that creates, administers and scores the SAT.
Kay Carnes, principal at Suncoast High School, said Steckler is a prime candidate for teaching students in the accelerated math program because he went through it when he was an eighth-grader.
``He has been quite an inspiration to the other students,`` Carnes said.
The accelerated program allows eighth-grade students to take advanced math courses, which will allow them to take dual enrollment classes taught by college professors when they enter high school.
Students end up taking three levels of calculus, linear equation and differential equation before they complete high school.
``To graduate with those kind of math courses under your belt is unheard of,`` said Stecker, who will take differential equation and linear algebra this coming school year.