Highland junior ‘still forgets his socks,’ but he got a perfect 36 score on ACT

Caleb Denby likes to think in black and white. Answers are right or wrong.

The first time he took the ACT, he was right a lot.

Caleb, 17, a junior at Highland High School, scored a perfect 36 on the test in February. That feat is matched by only one-tenth of 1 percent of the test-takers, and he’s the only one to do so in the metro-east in February, according to the college entrance exam’s officials.

He makes As and Bs, he says, with math being among his better subjects. Caleb says he does some homework after school, but finishes up most of it during his study hall time. His mom says getting him to study more is “an ongoing battle.”

Caleb didn’t take any prep classes for the exam and says he didn’t really study for it either.

“I just wanted to take it and see (how I’d do),” he said last week.

“We were making fun of one friend — he got a 33. The retaliation has been brutal,” he said.

Tess Stanhaus, Caleb’s mom, said they had wanted to get Caleb into a preparation course at the high school, but it competed with his honors classes. As a parent, it’s tough to urge him to study more when he does so well anyway, she said.

“You can’t praise him too much; you can’t get mad at them too much for what comes natural,” she said.

The English portion of the test proved hardest for Caleb, where he scored a 34. But scores on the other sections — math, science and reading — pulled his comprehensive score to a 35.5, which ACT calls a perfect 36.

Caleb got a 19 on one section of the ACT, the optional writing test that does not count toward the comprehensive score.

“I like the analytical thinking more,” he said.

Stanhaus said Caleb is the average kid who doesn’t want to do his homework and can really focus on things that interest him. For a while, that was karate, and he earned a black belt. Now it’s chess.

“He’s very bright obviously, but he’s still a kid,” she said. “He still forgets his socks for soccer practice.”

He’s in a tournament this weekend with the Continental Chess Association of St. Louis. He says he’s lucky that he lives nearby because people come to the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis just to learn from other chess players here.

Stanhaus said the rankings have not been updated to reflect his birthday, but he was rated 79th in the country for his age group when he was 16.

“If you’re doing well, you get moved to the wooden boards instead of the plastic,” he said of the Chess Club.

Chess tournaments come with cash prizes — the top prize at the Mid-America Open in Clayton this weekend is $2,000. Caleb has won money at the tournaments, saying he once walked away with at least $600, but that the money goes right back into funding more entry fees.

His sister, an art history major, said “Of course” when she found out from his mom that he had a perfect score.

“She’s pretty much the opposite; she’s very good at English,” he said.

Caleb wants to study computer science at college, but doesn’t have much preference for one university over another yet. Stanhaus said both she and Caleb’s dad, Craig Denby, went to the University of Illinois, as does his sister now.

“This (score) kind of opens up possibilities,” she said of his college future.

His mom says she knew early on that something was special about Caleb. When he was practicing the piano, she noticed one night that something sounded a little off. He’d been playing well, and then something was a little different with the timing. When she went in to check, she saw why.

“He was playing it cross-handed. And all I noticed was his timing was a little off. His brain is just like that. He’s such a normal kid, but then he can do stuff like that,” she said.

This story was originally published March 19, 2016 at 6:22 AM with the headline "Highland junior ‘still forgets his socks,’ but he got a perfect 36 score on ACT."