Meet Cameron Clarke: African American Teen Gets Perfect Score on SAT

We often find news outlets plaster disheartening news about African American teens getting locked up, doing drugs, and underachieving that the negative outshines the positive.

Here at Unheard Voices we like to talk more about the positives.

Meet Cameron Clarke

Clarke, a senior at Germantown Academy in Philadelphia, scored a perfect score on the SAT’s. That’s right a perfect 2400. He achieved something that hardly ever happens.

Although more than 1.66 million students took the SAT in 2012, only 360 test takers nationwide achieved a spotless 2400, according to SAT officials.

It was Cameron’s second time taing it. He scored a whooping 2190, and wanted to achieve higher. Because he knew he could, and that’s exactly what he did.

Cameron told Philly.com:

“I put in a lot of work,”

“I took a prep class with some of my friends, and I did a lot of practice tests from a book.”

“But that only prepares you so much,” he explained.

“The difference between getting, like, a 2400 and a couple of points lower is just focus.

“You can screw up or mess up on the smallest of things,” he said.

“And I just feel like on that particular day, I was focused and I got kind of lucky, I guess, that I didn’t make any mistakes.”

Cameron’s parents knew their son had a gift at an early age and nurtured his gift early on. Not only does he excel academically, he is also musically accomplished as well. Clarke is the principal cellist for the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra.

In addition, Cameron Clarke is a well-rounded student, as he lists in his impressive four page resume that he writes for his school paper, participates in the math computer, a senator in his school’s student government and has run cross country.

He was a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist. His dream school for college would be Princeton.

Congratulations Cameron on your hard work!