This Is My New Jersey

“What did you get on your SATs?”

It is a question we have all been asked at some point. And quite honestly, I avoid this question like the plague. If people were judged by their SAT scores alone, I would be considered dumber than a box of rocks. I took my SATs three times in high school. My score went down – all three times. I finally gave up taking it because I figured it could only get worse.

But not Sahli Negassi of West Orange. He earned a near perfect score when he took his SAT exam. Instead of just going with it, he thought, “I can do better.”

Perfect Score

When I was a kid, I had a Speak and Spell. This electronic game would ask you to spell different words and you would enter each letter a calculator-type device. If you spelled several correct in a row, it would announce, “perfect score.”

Well, Sahli received a much more impressive perfect score than I did on my Speak and Spell. He earned a perfect score on the dreaded SATs. Of the new two million students that take the SATs each year, fewer than 1,000 students achieve a perfect score.

As if this feat wasn’t impressive enough, he is a member of the chess team, president of the math team, captain of the cross-country team, president of the National Honor Society, and my personal favorite, he’s a member of the West Orange High School string ensemble.

Sahli hopes to attend Harvard and study law. I am sure Harvard would be thrilled to have such an intelligent young man with an activity-packed schedule. Congrats to you and your parents. I am sure they are proud!