The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com

January 29, 2009

The numbers are looking good for Desert Vista High School math students.

This year, 35 achieved perfect 800 scores in the math portion of the SAT or PSAT tests, which colleges and universities eyeball closely in assessing admission applications.

"It's so very, very neat," crowed Math Department Chairman Larry Strom, who predicted on the CBS Morning Show in 2004 that he'd double the number of perfect scorers, which then totaled 19.

Besides the 35 who achieved a perfect score, 23 other students fell one math problem short of perfection.

Strom hopes those kinds of numbers will interest CBS 60 Minutes in turning a national spotlight on Desert Vista's achievements.

"This is pretty amazing," he wrote, arguing the news show could wrap in Desert Vista's success with a look at "Barack Obama's emphasis on education, the new Secretary of Education, the importance of mathematics in the world, the importance of eliminating the ethnicity achievement gap."

So far, 60 Minutes hasn't responded, but Strom doesn't mind, saying that what matters is the school's growing success in nailing perfect math scores on the tests.

Since the 1997-98 school year, when senior Andrew Getskow became the first Desert Vista student to score 800 on the SAT test, a total 102 students - 65 boys and 37 girls - have achieved perfect scores on the SAT or PSAT math test.

That can mean a big payoff for the students.

"They (perfect scores) do lead to some pretty good scholarships at lots of places," Strom said.

The 14-year Desert Vista veteran teacher started an 800 Club a few years back to acknowledge the perfect scorers' achievement.

He credits a system of early identification of high-performing math students and the math boot camp that Tempe Union School District offers kids in 6th and 7th graders.

Of the 35 perfect scorers at Desert Vista this year, 21 are seniors who took the SAT, which is vital in the admission process at the vast majority of colleges and universities. The rest took the PSAT, a run-up to the SAT that Strom says "has the same degree of difficulty."

Tempe Union School District Superintendent Steve Adolph cited this year's 800 Club students as an example of how district students and staff "demonstrate outstanding leadership in academic excellence, delivery of exemplary instructional programs, athletics and the arts" every day.

The following Desert Vista seniors scored a perfect 800 on the SAT Math: Amy Zou, Audrey Guo, Jacqueline Xu, Shivani Kapur, Naina Dinesh, Booyeon Han, Scott Norgaard, Quentin Thornton, Rohit Umashankar, Brooke Clason, Kelsey Booth, Nicole Quinty, Brian Djaja, John Lee, Michael Johnson, Jason Park, Sean Rice, Andrew Ma, Ryan Barlow, Rohit Aggarwal, and Stephen Frost.

Juniors who made the grade are Nathan Stout, Daming Chen, Sumaria Veeravelli, Hannah Fadenrecht, and Grace Ma. Sophomores are Timothy Lee, Victor Bhattacharyya, and Rudy Chen. Freshmen include Brandon Djala, Jennifer Wu, Andrew Wu, and Seung Jae Son.