Just in time for graduation comes this story sure to make high school seniors stress out all over again: Joshua Yoon, a sixth-grader at Chicago’s Twin Groves Middle School, has scored a perfect 800 on the math SAT. He claims to be only the third student his age to achieve this in 21 years.
CBS news, which covered the story this week, sent reporter Marissa Bailey to the school to get the inside story on the 12-year-old’s achievement. In an interview, Yoon recounts how he grew bored with his curriculum and started browsing the seventh-grade math textbook. CBS also reports that Yoon “taught himself Algegbra [sic] 2.” He then demonstrates his prowess in a Beautiful Mind-like montage of equation scribbling while Bailey looks on, perplexed.
Yoon, who says he wants to be a doctor or a basketball player or baseball player when he grows up, doesn’t have much to say about his score, but hey — did you expect him to be a genius at everything? Thank you, Joshua Yoon, for proving that not all American schoolkids are limping behind their international peers when it comes to math.