PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Three getting 800 is one in a million.

Woodland High School seniors Evan Ailinger, Michael Gabalis and Orion Hollar each scored a perfect 800 on their math SATs. Officials with the College Board said only about 1% of students taking any section of the SAT get a perfect score.

Since the possibility of 3 students at the same school getting a perfect SAT math score is less than 0.0001%, that means Ailinger, Gabalis and Hollar achieved something that is literally less than one in a million.

That’s math.

Orion Hollar

“When you get the right answer, you know you’ve gotten the right answer.” It’s the definitive nature of solutions that drives Hollar.

Knowing the fundamentals and basics is key, he said. “If you know all of the basics and all the little things related to them, you’ll have a much better chance of doing well.”

After graduation, he hopes to major in Electrical Engineering at Oregon State University. “OSU’s location near the ocean results in a really excellent electrical engineering where they’re currently studying whether the ocean’s currents can be harnessed to generate electricity.”

Michael Gabalis

“Definitely trust your first instinct with an answer. The College Board has statistics that show students who change their answer more likely change a right answer to a wrong one rather than the other way around.”

Gabalis is also taking Calculus 4 at Clark College as a Running Start student and offered a tip on how to prepare for the SATs.

“When it comes to math, students shouldn’t study the questions they think might be on the test, they should study the concepts.”

When he leaves Woodland, he wants to attend the University of Washington and major in Aerospace Engineering. But he also enjoys English and history, “so I might minor in something in those areas, too.”

Evan Ailinger

“I love the feeling I get when I get the right answer for a math problem,” he said. He moved to Woodland his freshman year and said its small size gave him a chance to “get to know people really well.”

He also thanked the teachers at Woodland High. “All of our teachers give great guidance and have the answers we need, even when it comes to specific knowledge on what may be covered on the SATs.”

Ailinger is thinking about joining the military and going into nuclear study to be an operator for nuclear reactors. “The responsibility and accountability of that position really appeals to me.”