Austin student scores makes the perfect score -- twice

Navonil Ghosh and his family have prepared for an Ivy League college since he was 12 years old, and he hoped his two perfect standardized test scores would be the ticket.
But Navonil did not get into any of the Ivy League schools he's dreamed of going to since he was a kid. He's received five rejection letters so far, from schools like Stanford, MIT and Harvard.
It has meant a lot of work for everyone close to him to get to this point. His father quit his job when Navonil started high school at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy in East Austin.
He says he quit to drive Navonil to extracurricular activities like math club and kung fu and to help him study for these two tests.
“I could not sleep at all after the rejection from Harvard,” Nirmalendu Ghosh said.
In seventh grade, Navonil took the SAT just to see what he would make. He scored a 1340 out of 1600, which was the scoring system at the time.
At 17, he decided to take the tests again, this time with Ivy League colleges in mind. He scored just a few points away from perfect. That was in January
"I applied early to Stanford and I was rejected and that was disappointing, and I decided to take it again to boost my chances of getting into other colleges,” Ghosh said.
When he took the tests again a few months later, he scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT and a perfect 36 on the ACT.
The New York Times reported a record number of applications at American universities this year, which means record low acceptance rates.
Navonil said he had hoped things like his scores, his ranking of 4th in his class and his black belt in kung fu would help him, but he isn’t as worried now.
“It was disappointing at first, but then I looked at the colleges I did get into and I felt lucky to have choices,” he said.
He is currently deciding between Rice University in Houston, and Cal-Tech in Pasadena, Calif.