“We’re still waiting to hear on that,” he said. “The guidance office here doesn’t know of anybody else who’s ever scored a perfect score on any AP exam before Adam.”
McKain said his student has “a very quick mind” and is an excellent problem solver with an excellent work ethic.
“He’s just the kind of person who, when his curiosity leads him to a problem, rather than just blowing it off and going on like many students will do, he’ll say, ‘No, I’m going to see if I can figure that out,’” he said.
That means spending time on his own outside of class researching the subject matter and experimenting, McKain said.
“It’s that kind of work ethic, I believe, that’s the difference here,” he said.
Loeb, an 18-year-old senior now taking his third class with McKain, said his accomplishment wasn’t entirely due to skill because “there’s too many mistakes out there to be had.”
“While I did know the material, and a lot of that does go to Mr. McKain who does an outstanding job of teaching me in computer science class, there was also luck involved,” he said.
Loeb started taking computer science classes in his sophomore year.
“I thought I wanted to go into engineering or something that related to technology because I like video games, I like math, I like science … so I thought I’d try out computer science,” he said.
Loeb went on to participate in multiple competitions around the region and the nation. He was part of the team that last year traveled to Raleigh, N.C., for the American Computer Science League All-Star Competition. The team placed first for the Midwest and sixth place out of 14 for teams consisting of students from all over the world.
He also was one of 18 students selected to participate in a General Electric internship this summer at the company’s aviation and IT department. He’s now part of a school-year pilot internship program at GE.
Loeb said he aspires to attend a college with an advanced computer science program, such as Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University or the University of Illinois.
He said he hopes to work at Apple, Google or Microsoft, then use that experience to start his own company.
“I’d love to be able to write software because I could make a big impact on the world,” Loeb said.
Lakota Superintendent Karen Mantia said Loeb is “a true representative of the well-rounded students” the district hopes to produce.
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