Metro Atlanta teen gets perfect SAT score on her 1st try
ATLANTA - The SAT can be a challenging hurdle for a lot of students trying to get the best score possible for college admissions. For one metro Atlanta high school junior, what she thought would be a practice round for her on the test ended in a perfect score.
It's clear right away that Ashley Miller has a drive for learning. The junior at Westminster Schools is taking AP Biology, AP Latin, AP BC Calculus, AP Literature, and AP European History, earning A's in every class.
With college applications in the near future, she decided to go ahead and take the SAT so that she could see which areas she needed to study.
"Well, I wasn't really expecting much because I had done a bunch of practice tests, but I didn't have to take the SAT this early. It was more of like a diagnostic test, like let's see where I am, and then we can change my study habits moving forward. This was the first time I had taken it. So there wasn't really any pressure, let's just see where I am and then what we have to do about it," she told Good Day Atlanta's Lindsay Tuman.
When she sat down for the test, Miller said she didn't have the best feeling.
"Still I was nervous going in, and I remember during the first section, the reading section, I felt like my brain got really foggy - like I couldn't think straight, and I remember thinking, 'Oh no. We're definitely going to have to take another test, it's not this one because I can't think straight, I don't know what's going on,'" she said.
So on the day the results came out, Miller wasn't expecting too much.
"So I opened it to see if they were up, and I was on my bed, and I was groggy, eyes blurry, I didn't have my glasses on, the cat was sitting next to me. I opened it to see they were posted and saw the score, and I was like, 'That has to be wrong. That's gotta be a glitch.' But I refreshed, and it wasn't," she said.
Miller got 1600, a perfect score. According to CollegeWise, the top 1% of more than 2 million students who took the SAT got anywhere from 1550 to 1600. A fraction of a percent received perfect scores.
"I knew she had a chance of getting a perfect score, but nobody expects that. I knew she was going to do really well. When we saw it, we were just over the moon, really proud of her," her father, Jared Miller remarked.
He says he and his wife have known Ashley was intelligent from a very young age.
"I always like to say, and it's not really a joke, that Ashley is one of the few people who intellectually intimidates me. I actually went to college at Harvard myself, and so I've been around a lot of smart people, and she's the smartest person I've ever met," he said.
Somehow, outside of her course load, Miller manages to study Japanese, and she's active in theater.
"After school a lot of times I'm overwhelmed, I'm like, ‘Gosh I have a lot of work.’ Even though rehearsal takes up time, I always really enjoy it, so it doesn't really feel like a responsibility I have to get through. It's something I enjoy at the end of every day," she said.
(Courtesy of the family)
Those are two passions she hopes to take with her to college as well. She doesn't have her heart set on one school yet, but she knows she wants to help people.
"I don't have a specific career dream, but I definitely know I want to go somewhere in the realm of biochem, or psychology, and neuroscience, and kind of how those things go together, like the science behind mental health," she said.
"Whatever she decides to do she's going to have a lot of opportunities," her father said.
Miller says she does plan to take the SAT one more time in the fall to qualify as a National Merit Scholar as well.