SAT is a piece of cake for these young teens

Chloe Foster, Annabel Conger, Katie Daenzer and Haylie Peacock all took the Scholastic Aptitude Test recently and scored higher than the average high school senior.

The thing is, the girls are all in eighth grade at Columbia Falls Junior High School.

They took the test as part of the SAT Challenge, which pits junior high schoolers against the college entrance exam. They haven’t even studied some of the material on the SAT, but most of it was a familiar, the girls said.

“I was surprised at how much I recognized,” Conger said last week.

“I took it just to evaluate where I am right now,” Foster said.

The girls have varying interests but hold several things in common. For one, they don’t watch much television, but they read a lot of books.

Foster said she wasn’t sure of her career path, Conger said she likes to write and enjoys science, Daenzer wants to be an inventor and work with animals, and Peacock wants to be a movie actress, singer songwriter and a young adult novelist.

When they do watch TV, they tend to enjoy the more challenging shows. Foster and Conger like the series “Sherlock,” Daenzer likes “Psych” and Peacock said she doesn’t have a TV at all in her house — not even Netflix.

“It makes it special when I’m in hotels,” she said.

They’re all active in sports. Foster and Peacock play soccer, Conger runs cross-country and track, and Daenzer is in track, too.

The girls each scored better than 40 percent of the high school seniors who took the test.

So what sets them apart from their peers? They surmised most eighth graders are worried about their social status, Facebook pages or simply aren’t very motivated.

“They’re just coasting through,” Peacock said.

Their junior high SAT scores won’t count, however. The girls will take the college entrance test for real in their junior and senior years, they said.