While many 10-year-olds are celebrating the freedom of summer, one Bethesda student has another reason to smile.
Griffin Myers, 10, recently received a perfect score on verbal portion of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth Talent Search, one of only seven students nationwide to ace the test.
"I felt pretty confident that I knew most the questions, but some were a little challenging," said the incoming Cabin John Middle School sixth-grader. "I didn't really study, but I read a ton, so I was pretty confident."
More than 20,000 students in grades two through five took the exam, said Charles Beckman, director of communications for the Hopkins program. The center strives to identify bright children at a young age, then introduce them to topics they may not cover in a normal classroom.
Since joining the program in third grade, Griffin has taken online math and science classes, said her mother, Andrea Keane-Myers.
The test is similar to the SAT. It consists of verbal and mathematics sections, spaced out over the course of about an hour. Each child takes the exam on a computer at testing facilities across the country.
The center itself has been around since 1979, and more than 100,000 students have taken part in its programs.
Despite his work with thousands of children, Beckman said Griffin is special.
"Bottom line, she's extremely bright," he said. "At 10 I was worried about how many gummi bears I had in my pocket, and these kids are just so far beyond that."
Making her score even more impressive was that the exam was only open to students who were already in the gifted program, Griffin's mother said.
And she should know talent when she sees it; Andrea Keane-Myers was also a part of the Center for Talented Youth while growing up on the Eastern Shore.
Still, her experience was nothing like this.
"We were pleased and really astonished," she said. "Her father and I are just huge readers to begin with, but she goes through books at an alarming rate."
Griffin said she didn't study for the exam at all. Instead she just read and read. She sticks mostly to fantasy and science fiction, and has taken a liking to the Ender's Game and Chronicles of Narnia series, she said.
When she's not flipping through books — two to three at a time, according to her mother — she sticks to normal 10-year-old activities — sleep-away camp, swim practice and running.
In addition to her perfect score on the verbal portion of the talent search, Griffin also scored in the top 25 percent nationally on the math portion.
"I do like other things, like math and stuff," she said, "but I usually just read, read, read."
