Can you do better than this 10-year-old on SAT?

ST. GEORGE, Utah — Following in her mother's footsteps, a 10-year-old student here scored better than 4 out of 5 11th-graders who took the math portion of the SAT last year.

Catalina "Catty" Lemmon scored 570, almost 60 points above the national SAT mean math score of 511 and higher than 92% of the gifted 12-year-olds who took the test, according to information from Duke University Talent Identification Program's 7th Grade Talent Search.

Catty's mom, Asia Lemmon, said she took the SAT when she was 12 years old as part of the same program and scored higher than a majority of high school seniors taking the same test.

Lemmon taught her daughter sign language before she could speak. Then after Catty started to learn English, Lemmon added in Spanish.

The 10-year-old is now a student at Providence Innovation Academy, a faith-based private school here, and has been skipping grades and moving ahead since she began her formal education. The average 10-year-old is a fourth- or fifth-grader, and a high school sophomore who first takes the SAT is often 15 or 16.

“There is no question she’s a prodigy,” said Principal Gregg McDermott. The school's website says students, who are placed in multi-age classrooms with one teacher for several years, can advance to a college as fast as they are able.

Catty has been working on a computer since age 2 and navigating the Internet since she was 3, her mother said. Catty does computer programming, started working with graphic arts at age 5 and could build a website at age 8.

Her curriculum at Providence Academy includes college material as well as an individualized online learning math program that allows Catty to go back and forth between trigonometry, geometry and advanced algebra.

“We do it together at home,” Lemmon said of the online math program. “We turn the volume way up, and we can cheer when we get one right.”

Keeping Catty’s schoolwork fun is one of the goals Lemmon has for her daughter, based at least in part on the opposite experience she had as a child.

“My parents pushed me so hard. I ran away from home at 16,” Lemmon said. “I would never do that to her.”

Catty said she does find one class particularly difficult: physical education.

“I’m supposed to be inside with a computer,” she said.

Seated in a classroom with her best friend, Alexia “Muffin” Tackett, 12, the two spend their lunch break playing on Catty’s laptop, watching a video Catty created to audition for the chance to appear on the Lifetime Channel’s Child Genius show and NBC-TV's Little Big Shots featuring Ellen DeGeneres and Steve Harvey.

“She is so amazing. I love her guts,” Tackett said, adding that her own mother is jealous of Catty’s intellect.

“A lot of people are,” Catty said.

Catty's coursework this year is becoming more challenging for her mom. Even so Lemmon said the biggest challenge for her as the mother of a child like Catty is finding a college that will take a 14-year-old.

“She’s like Doogie Howser,” Asia said, a reference to the 1989-93 TV show that is totally lost on Catty’s youth.

Some of that set Catty apart even among other intellectually gifted students are her organizational skills, her maturity and well-rounded interests, McDermott said.

“I’m weird. I like My Little Pony and Game of Thrones,” Catty said.

“Some people may think that she could be socially unable to deal with kids five or six years older than her, but she’s displayed more maturity than a lot of 15-year-olds,” McDermott said. “She seems to be extremely balanced.”

Lemmon said one of the reasons her daughter is well adjusted is the stability of their mother-daughter relationship.

“She’s always been very mature for her age, and I’m extremely immature for my age," Lemmon said with a laugh. "So it works out great."

Follow Lisa Larson on Twitter: @LisaGLarson

How Catty's score stacks up

Students who take the SAT math test score in a range from 200 to 800. Some other SAT math benchmarks:

• Average Asian-American student: 598

• Average independent private school student: 579

• Average of sophomores who did not retake the test later: 573

• Average of students with more than four years of math: 572

• Catty's math score: 570

• Average religiously affiliated school student: 536

• Average white student: 534

• Average male student: 527

• Average: 511

• Average public-school student: 498

• Average female student: 496

• Average Hispanic student: 457

Note: The average, or mean, scores are for college-bound seniors through June 2015.

Source: The College Board

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