Junior High students score well on SAT

Every year, a few Columbia Falls Junior High School students take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the standard test for college entrance, even though they’re four to five years from college life.

Still, the seven students who took the SAT this year said it was worth it. Taking the test this year were Katie Helton, Ava Chisholm, Madeline Jarvis, Eric Cunningham, Sam Baltz, Hannah Callender and Willie Baltz.

“I just took it for the experience,” eighth-grader Helton said. “Just to see how it was.”

Helton would like to be an architect some day. The SAT proved to be a good challenge, but the students said it mostly covered academic ground they’ve seen before.

“The language arts stuff was easy,” eighth-grader Chisholm said. “It was something we already knew.”

But not everything was familiar. In the age of keyboarding and texting, normal cursive handwriting taught in elementary schools was elusive.

“The hardest part was writing in cursive,” eighth-grader Callender said.

The seven students did well on the test for their age, scoring in the 60th to 80th percentile for high school students.

And they have higher aspirations. Chisholm said she’d like to be a Broadway actress, Jarvis and Sam Baltz said they’re considering careers in the military, Cunningham wants to study computer science, Willie Baltz wants to study engineering, and Callender is thinking of a law career.