St. Petersburg College Early College Honors Student Earns Perfect SAT Score

PINELLAS COUNTY, FL — St. Petersburg College's Honors and Early College programs offer the best and the brightest Pinellas County Schools students a chance to get a huge head start on college. Recently, Palm Harbor University High School Junior Angela Li became the first Honors and Early College student at SPC to score a perfect 1600 on the SAT. Li, 17, is among less than one 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 many practice tests and problems, but 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 is a very involved student who plays basketball and runs track at PHUHS. She also volunteers in the community, and she has almost 210 documented service hours. She was president of SPC’s Honors Program Student Consortium, and she works on the Poynter Institute’s Teen Fact Checking Network. She is also an active member of SPC’s nationally recognized Model United Nations Team. Through the Honors/Early College program, she has already earned 58 college credits, and will graduate in May 2022 with her high school diploma and an Associate Degree.

SPC’s 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 towards 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 special mentoring, scholarship opportunities and much more.

SPC’s Honors Program Director Earl Fratus said Li gets things done because of her passion and drive.

“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.”

Angela isn’t the only Li to take the world by storm. Her older sister, Kayla, was also an Honors/Early College student at SPC, and she received her high school diploma from Pinellas County Schools 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 esteemed University of Oxford, where she was a recipient of the Clarendon Scholarship. Kayla was recently accepted to Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami on a full academic scholarship.

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 the Language Initiative. Though she hasn’t decided on a major or a college when she graduates next spring, she’s sure to be a stand-out wherever she goes.

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

This press release was produced by the St. Petersburg College. The views expressed here are the author’s own.