Posted on 09/01/2006 11:32:58 AM PDT by aculeus
Parents and teachers call him St. Paul's low-key whiz kid. Jake Heichert grew up spurning studying, sleeping through the occasional exam — and, most recently, earning a rare pair of perfect scores on the ACT and SAT.
Last week, his family sat around their living room, wondering how it all happened.
Rich and Susan Heichert's only child received a 2400 on his SAT college assessment test in May. In February he scored a 36 on his ACT. He earned perfect 5s on his Advanced Placement tests in chemistry, U.S. history, and government and politics.
Oh, and calculus, Jake added. Almost forgot.
His parents searched for an explanation.
"Do you study, Jake?" Susan asked.
"We've never seen it," Rich added.
"They told us he might have a learning disability," Susan said of the day Jake was born, oxygen deprived.
"I'm sure when I'm 30 it'll show up," Jake, 18, added.
"The deal is, he gets good grades and we don't bother him," Susan explained.
From outward appearances, Jake should need to be bothered. He slept through his first SAT test last winter. On his ACT, he forgot his calculator. Didn't realize it until a third of the way through.
"I've gotten better about setting more alarms," he explained of his ever-evolving test-taking techniques.
One would wonder if school has prepared him. He's been to more than a few: kindergarten in Iowa; the first four grades in Detroit; fifth through eighth in St. Paul public and private schools; then high school in Shanghai. Then back to St. Paul, at St. Paul Academy and Summit School, to finish this past May.
Rich Heichert, a manufacturing manager for 3M, moved around a lot.
"Different teachers, different styles," Jake said with nonchalant self-assurance. "I feel like if you know what you want to study, then when you move around it sets a continuity."
"He's always been pretty bored in school no matter where he's gone," said Susan, turning to her son. "Jake's a good student, but he needs to pay attention."
"Why do I need to pay attention if I get good grades?" Jake replied. His father chuckled, his mother rolled her eyes, and there was a silence that bordered between proud and exasperated.
George Leiter, a calculus teacher at St. Paul Academy, said Jake's strength is his ability to take a "big picture" approach to tough problems, crack them creatively and conceptually, rather than whittling away at details.
"He's got a good balance. You sometimes run into kids that are just exceptional mathematically, so you know that's where they're going. But not him," Leiter said. "I don't want to patronize, but he's kind of the regular kid in the class. The first thing I think about him is he was kind of proud of having a cool, fashionable leather jacket. He took a little pride in that he was kind of the low-key whiz kid."
Rich Heichert finds it hard to lecture his son. It's his son, after all, whom he calls to ask for answers to crossword puzzles he tackles with his friends.
"What's the currency of South Africa?" he would ask. "The rand," Jake would rattle off.
The parents had more than a few clues the boy was smart. His subscriptions to The Economist and Time (and Electronic Gaming Monthly). His habit of doing math problems for fun on long plane flights. And reading — without any academic impetus — intellectual tomes such as "Guns, Germs, and Steel."
"Reading a lot, more and more, just makes your mind work in a certain way," Jake said.
"He spends his own money on them, is what drives us crazy," Susan Heichart said.
Surely, signs of higher reasoning. But then, on the other hand. …
"I do homework a lot in front of the TV," Jake said. "I've never been much of a studying person. Tests I just sorta … 'got.' "
Local and state education officials say getting perfect scores on both the SAT and ACT tests is unprecedented, at least in their memory.
"I can't remember it happening here," said Doug Gray, spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Education.
Rich Goldsmith, spokesman for St. Paul Public Schools, said 2004 was the last year the district had a perfect ACT score. As for both tests? He's stumped.
Still, Minnesota has a good history when it comes to the ACT. For the last two years, Minnesota was the highest-ranking state for ACT scores out of states where the majority of high school students took the test. For the past decade, it's been in the top three.
Kristin Crouse, an ACT spokeswoman, noted that less than 0.01 percent of test takers get a perfect score: 256 in the past testing year out of 2.1 million takers.
"When you think of how small of a group that is, then with getting a perfect score on the other test — there's no numbers to put to that," she said.
Traveling so much, and spending a lot of time reading, for years Jake saw himself as a "shy, nerdy kid," ostracized by others. He delved heavily into reading history, and science fiction.
Then one book in particular — "Ender's Game," by Orson Scott Card — rallied him. It's about a shy, ostracized kid, who went on to save the world.
"I thought, things, they aren't the greatest, but I'm also not making it as good as I could be," Jake said. He opened up, forcing himself to socialize with strangers, and the last several years at St. Paul Academy paid off, he said. He earned letters on the fencing and tennis teams.
As Jake packs his things to head to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to study economics next week, he groans when his parents say they'll visit every month. He's nervous, but thinks he's got it under control: A suitcase of clothes, a suitcase of books — that's most of what he'll need.
© 2006 St. Paul Pioneer Press and wire service sources.
It has been my impression that few students take both the SAT and ACT.
2400? When'd they change that? I thought a perfect score was a 1600.
This young man is well on the way towards haning around bars alone at happy hour, annoying the other patrons by giving all the questions to the answers on Jepoardy.
I know some folks like that.
Many kids take both ACT and SAT in Connecticut (according to the Wall St. Journal).
If he is so smart, why does he subscribe to Time?
Too bad he wasn't homeschooled. He'd probably have graduated from college by now.
Or the Economist - just as socialistic.
By watching and drinking at home alone, I don't annoy anyone. ;-)
That's a good thing.
I took both.
'Course that was 30 years ago...
Unfortunately the original two were changed significantly and the scores on the old SATs cannot be compared at all to the scores on the new SATs (even without the writing section).
The new SAT writing section can be easily scammed by writing a very long essay. A professor in (I think) Wisconsin proved that the kids with the best writing scores all wrote the longest essays, even tho the essays may not have made any sense and may have contained many spelling and grammatical errors.
Ah, well, that explains it then.
(Seriously, Card's a good writer and can be conservative, too.)
I scored 2400 on the SAT too. (the fact that I took it 4 times and added the scores doesn't change anything...does it?) :0 )
The high-end students who are likely to score well are more likely to take both, I expect. I took both in 1992.
I hate to admit it but I have that type of intelligence. The person who is not an expert in any particualr subject but yet can talk about anything for hours on end. I am the type who you want on your trivial pursuit team, but not the person to help you study for an exam.
"I am the type who you want on your trivial pursuit team, but not the person to help you study for an exam."
LOL! Sounds familiar...
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