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Friends of Preston Anderson '12, who, by the way, just scored a 96 on his math midterm, have reported that the topic of test scores comes up unusually often in conversation with him. Anderson's friend Jared Blay '12, who, if Anderson remembers correctly, only got a 720 on the SAT math section compared to his 760, noticed the steady presence of midterm grades, marks on papers, and both SAT I and II scores in unrelated discussions.
A student retrieving his mail from the J. Walter Wilson mail room recalls, "[Anderson] walked by so I called him over, and somewhere in between 'this mailbox is in a great location' and 'hey that's a large envelope' he slipped in 'oh, your locker number is the same as my combined SAT score.'"
Another friend, David Olds '12, who scored a 93 on the last econ test, which was pretty good, but not as good as Anderson's 94, also perceived a mysterious driftin casual conversations with his friend to the topic of test scores. He recalls a particular time he was talking with Anderson about the opposite sex: "In the middle of the conversation he went, 'I've heard that girls average about 10 points higher on the writing section. I guess the girl version of me would've gotten a 750. But back to what you were saying.'" Olds, momentarily confused, then tried to change the subject, bringing up relationship troubles with his girlfriend of five months. Anderson casually responded, "Yeah, life can really suck, like our last psych test was graded totally unfairly. I only got a 13 out of 15, on my essay, because, like, when in real life would you ever have to write an essay like that?" As Olds began to expound on his troubles, Anderson felt it necessary to add, "I guess I shouldn't be complaining though, a 13 isn't a bad score. By the way, what did you get?"
When asked about his conversational habits, Anderson declined to do anything but comment. "I'm not really sure what you're talking about. My 770 on literature SAT II and the 91 I got on that really hard paper I had in psych class just seem to come up sometimes. I'm not going to hide anything if that's where the conversation goes."
Sources say test scores have even come up in conversations between Anderson and acquaintances, or even random locals on the street. A befuddled student reported, "I was impressed at Preston's 760 on the SAT math section, and then I realized we were standing in line at Starbucks politely talking, and I had just met him."
