Junior makes perfect score on SAT

Every year, college hopefuls sharpen their math and reading skills in preparation for the SAT - an exam that will test their college readiness.

In fact, close to 2 million high school students completed the exam in 2011, according to College Board.

Of those test-takers, 384 aced the exam with a perfect score of 2400.

Josh Mu, 16, a junior at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, is one of the elite to make a perfect score.

“This is my third time taking it,” Josh said. “I was quite happy.”

In preparation for the exam, Josh said he enrolled in Kaplan courses and studied often. On test day, Josh said he wasn't nervous about the exam, but he was worried about being able to see the test - he had to have his eyes dilated at the doctor that morning.

Luckily, he said, it didn't harm his scores.

And while he excelled in all aspects of the exam, he said the math portion of the test came easiest to him.

“It always seems logical and there is always an answer,” Josh said.

His advice to future test-takers: “Relax and hope for the best.”

Aside from doing well in school, Josh also stands out in the chess community. In March, Josh took first place in the North Carolina Scholastic Chess Championship. He then advanced to the National level competition held in Minneapolis in mid-April, where he tied for 18th place.

Photo: Josh Mu (left) won the 2012 N.C. State Scholastic Championship in March. Photo courtesy of Joyce Mu.

Stumped on our math question?

This week, we heard from a Young Achiever with a special gift of solving equations and excelling in math.

After all, Lloyd Liu scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT - as a seventh grader.

In the story, we challenged readers with a practice math question from Lloyd's MathCounts School Handbook.

We posed this question:
Q: If a set of seven positive integers has a mean of 5, what is the greatest possible integer in the set?
The answer: 29.

A few of you were stumped, so we went back to Lloyd's math teacher, Andria Sullivan for an explanation:

For seven positive integers to have a mean of 5, the sum of the integer must be 7*5=35. If one of the integers is to be as great as possible the other 6 would have to be the least possible meaning 1. Therefore 1+1+1+1+1+1+29=35. So, the greatest integer is 29.

Want to continue to test your math skills?
Here is another problem to keep you busy:

Q: Marika shoots a basketball until she makes 20 shots or until she has made 60 percent of her shots, whichever happens first. After she has made 10 of her first 20 shots, how many more shots in a row does she have to make to be finished?
See below for answer.

Question source: MATHCOUNTS School Handbook 2004-05.
Photo: Lloyd Liu, 13, a seventh grade student at Randolph Middle. Photo by Brittany Penland.
Question answer: 5.