Son of maintenance worker gets perfect score on AP Calculus exam -- 1 of 12 in the world to do so [View all]

Son of maintenance worker gets perfect score on AP Calculus exam -- 1 of 12 in the world to do so

By Hailey Branson-Potts
hailey.branson@latimes.com
@haileybranson

January 27, 2016, 7:10 PM

The call from Lincoln High School’s principal’s office came unexpectedly, as they often do. ... Cedrick Argueta’s friends joked that he might be in trouble. Cedrick didn’t think so. ... He was right.

It turned out that Cedrick, the son of a Salvadoran maintenance worker and a Filipina nurse, had scored perfectly on his Advanced Placement Calculus exam. Of the 302,531 students to take the notoriously mind-crushing test, he was one of only 12 to earn every single point. ... “It’s crazy,” Cedrick said. “Twelve people in the whole world to do this and I was one of them? It’s amazing.”
....

Cedrick is the son of Lilian and Marcos Argueta, both of whom came to the United States as young adults – she from the Philippines, he from El Salvador. Lilian, a licensed vocational nurse, works two jobs at nursing homes. Marcos is a maintenance worker at one of those nursing homes. He never went to high school.
....

Cedrick graduates in June and hopes to attend Caltech and become an engineer. For his family, a scholarship would be a godsend.