Mauldin High School Senior Earns Perfect SAT Score

Very few students get a perfect SAT score, even those at the country's top colleges. An Upstate senior is among this year's high school elite. Tonight, she tells us how a cell phone helped her earn the perfect score.

If you were to see her walking to class or you stopped to talk to her in the halls of Mauldin High School, Natasha Deshpande seems like your typical teen. She says, “I mean... I like the mall. I like movies, all normal teenage stuff." She's also president of beta club and secretary of the speech & debate club. She dances and volunteers for Meals on Wheels. She is also number one in her senior class. According to Deshpande, getting a perfect SAT score wasn’t one of her goals, “The SAT wasn't something that I was really that targeted towards until my mom told me, you need to get your score better. I have been after her for a really nice phone for a long time. I’ll get you a phone, if you make at least 1500 on the SAT." So after scoring a 1440, with a perfect score on writing on her first try last year, she took the test in October for a third time. "When I got home that day, I had a fever, so I spent the rest of that day sleeping and so when I went to check my scores, I wasn't sure what they'd be." She earned a perfect score.

Guidance Counselor Jane Smith says, "It is such a rare thing. I've been doing seniors for six years, and we have students who have had a perfect score in two areas, but not in three since I’ve been doing this." Smith says Natasha is the kind of girl who takes advantage of opportunities, works hard, and gives back. She says one of the best things parents can do to help children excel is to encourage them in the areas in which they are interested whether it is academics, music or athletics. Natasha’s mom is a teacher at Maudlin, and she says her parents are academically oriented, never pushing her, but believing in her. Natasha says, "When I was little, there was always time to study, but there was also time to play too."

Natasha says in preparation for her third shot at the SAT, she studied practice tests and focused on her weak spot - critical thinking putting no more than 15 - 20 minutes a day. She hopes to study engineering at Georgia Tech or M.I.T after making perfect scores on two subject level tests as well.

The Greenville County School District also had one more perfect score in October: Senior Hannah Chen of Riverside High School.