Laurel Junior Earns Perfect SAT Score

Most people twice her age would be satisfied accomplishing what one Laurel School student has done halfway through her junior year.

To this point, Anamika Veeramani has met President Barack Obama, won the 2010 Scripps Spelling Bee, launched an online scientific research journal and excelled on Laurel's golf and speech and debate teams.

Anamika's latest addition to that list? A perfect 2400 score on her SATs.

Anamika would rather strive to do better than gawk at her own accolades. It shows when she talks about most of her feats, including her recent test results.

"I was so happy I didn't have to take it again," she said, "but I guess I wasn't as prepared for it as I would have liked to have been. Around that time, I had a lot of tests, quizzes and papers."

She had been practicing versions of the test dating back to sixth grade, when she enrolled in a Center for Talent Development program while she was a student at Incarnate Word Academy in Parma Heights.

Anamika says having a few college-aged friends is part of the reason why she never felt there was a limit to what she could achieve as a high schooler. She has never wanted anything to do with complacency, especially after winning the spelling bee, which landed her a trip to the White House and a spot on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

"My huge thing going into high school was that I didn't want the spelling bee to be the highlight of my life," she said. "Like, who wants to peak in eighth grade?"

Winning that nationally televised competition gave rid her of her shyness. She would go onto connect with other students in person and online to create En Kephalos, a science journal with contributions from students in Ohio and Tennessee.

"My friend did a lot of research, and I've had several friends like this who do a lot of great research, but because they're in high school they don't get taken seriously by any real science journals," Anamika said. "Science fairs only get you so far, so what I wanted to do was have this forum that goes beyond science fairs where students could publish their work and people could read it."

Anamika has dreams of becoming a heart surgeon and chief of surgery. She plans to begin that journey by attending Harvard, Yale or Princeton, even though she jokes that the Ivy League route might be "cliché."

She thanks her parents and brother for guidance along the way to her accomplishments. However, she's clearly not finished.

"I want to keep doing bigger and better things."