Palm Harbor University High Student Earns Perfect SAT Score

PALM HARBOR, FL — Palm Harbor University High School junior Angela Li has become the first Honors and Early College Program student at St. Petersburg College to score a perfect 1600 on the SAT.

Angela Li, 17, is among less than 1 percent of students who attempt the SAT and earn a perfect score.

Li had taken the test once before, earning a 1560, but decided to try again. She prepared by taking practice tests, but she said she never expected a perfect score.

"I just wanted at least a solid score, so that's why I didn't want to take it the second time," she said. "So it's a pleasant surprise it ended up this way."

Li plays basketball and runs track at Palm Harbor University High. She also volunteers in the community, accumulating nearly 210 service hours. Additionally, she was president of SPC's Honors Program Student Consortium, works on the Poynter Institute's Teen Fact Checking Network and is an active member of SPC's nationally recognized Model United Nations Team.

Through the Honors and Early College program, she has already earned 58 college credits, and will graduate in May 2022 with her high school diploma and an associate's degree.

SPC's Honors and Early College Program is a free program for rising high school juniors who meet GPA and test score requirements and wish to spend their last two years of high school attending classes on SPC campuses. These students work simultaneously toward a high school diploma and an associate in arts degree from SPC.

Early college students are also allowed to join SPC students in the Honors Program, where they can receive mentoring, scholarship opportunities and other academic help.

SPC's Honors Program Director Earl Fratus wasn't surprised to learn Li earned a perfect score on her SAT.

"Angela is an energetic, enthusiastic student leader," Fratus said. "She is always trying to get involved in events at the college, and she works tirelessly to improve those events and make sure that her fellow students get involved."

Li isn't the only member of her family to take the world by storm. Her older sister, Kayla, was also an Honors and Early College student at SPC, receiving both her high school diploma and her associate in arts degree from SPC in May 2016. She has since graduated from the University of South Florida and finished a graduate degree at England's University of Oxford, where she was a recipient of the Clarendon Scholarship. Kayla Li was recently accepted to Florida International University's Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami on a full academic scholarship.

Angela Li, who recently began studying Korean through the U.S. Department of State's National Security Language Initiative for Youth, will spend seven weeks this summer in Seoul, South Korea.
She will live with a host family and attend a university there as part of SPC's Language Initiative.

She's still exploring her options for a college and major when she graduates next spring.

"Academics have always been very important to me and my family," she said.