When they graduate from high school, they will not have their licenses to drive.

Ben Clark, Jordan Goldstein and Eric Sherman are what some might call whiz kids. All three are students at public high schools in Lancaster County.

Ben is 13 and a sophomore at Penn Manor High School. Jordan is 15 and a junior at Manheim Township High School. Eric is 15 and a senior at Ephrata High School.

Their areas of expertise are math, math and physics, and science, respectively.

They have earned perfect scores on national exams and won many academic competitions.

Each of them has skipped two grades in school and still they take multiple advanced-placement classes. They also are enrolled in college courses at the same time they are in high school.

They couldn't fathom their lives any other way.

"I couldn't stand being back in eighth grade and taking normal courses," Ben says. "I would go insane."

Jordan and Eric, both 15, admit that at times they have yearned for a typical high school experience. It can be difficult to be the youngest or smallest student.

But they'd never go back.

"I'd much rather be where I am now than a normal high school kid," Eric says.

Jordan's view is this: "It's a social inconvenience; other than that, I am OK with it."

There are many areas where Ben seems typical.

He is the son of Jay and Jill Clark, of Hearthstone Road, Lancaster. His brother, John, is in sixth grade at Central Manor Elementary School (he takes advanced math classes, too).

He has Harry Potter posters on his wall. He plays Halo 3, an X-Box 360 video game. He likes to read science fiction. As with many teens, his room isn't quite tidy.

He also likes to ski and rock climb.

But for fun, Ben took an old computer and "ripped the whole thing apart just to look at the guts of it, and find out how it worked," his mother says.

And, when he was in kindergarten Ben could solve double-digit division problems in his head.

While he's a sophomore, many of his classes are with juniors and seniors.

"I get along better with them than I did kids my own age," he says.

He participates in math competitions.

He was on the Penn Manor math team that recently won first place in the Millersville University High School Mathematics Contest.

Twenty-nine high schools competed. Ben also tied for second place for the individual score award.

Recently, Ben earned a perfect score on the American Mathematics Contest 10, a program of The Mathematical Association of America.

The AMC 10 tests pre-calculus concepts.

When he was 11, he earned a perfect score on the AMC 8, which tests algebra, geometry, number theory, counting methods and probability.

Also at 11, Ben nearly achieved perfection on the math portion of the SAT. He earned a 790 out of a possible 800.

Ben needed to skip grades. He had long surpassed his classmates.

"The skip from seventh grade to high school was difficult," Mr. Clark says.

His parents worried, Jay Clark says, would Ben be ready for college at 16?

"He keeps exceeding our expectations academically and otherwise...," Mr. Clark says.

Penn Manor "has been great," he adds, at guiding his son and helping him adjust.

Ben will turn 16 the week he graduates from Penn Manor.

In one area, Jordan is a typical teenager for sure.

His room is disaster. And, he likes it like that, his mother says.

The son of Peter and Loni Goldstein, who live on Pickering Trail, Lancaster, he has an 11-year-old sister, Mikayla, who is in the Manheim Township Spanish Immersion program.

Jordan, however, is far from ordinary.

When he was in the third grade, on Dr. Seuss Day, teachers told students to come to school dressed as a character from their favorite book.

Jordan's favorite book was "The Science Encyclopedia."

He came to school dressed as DNA.

When he was 11, he took astrophysics at Franklin & Marshall College.

He's No. 1 in his class at Manheim Township High.

He has won many awards.

Two he shares with Eric.

Jordan has won awards from the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth for his scores on college entrance exams.

Eric did, too. Both were about 11 years old.

Jordan and Eric are Davidson Institute Scholars. The institute is a nonprofit that has programs for "profoundly gifted students," who score in the 99th percentile on IQ and achievement tests.

Jordan and Ben have areas in common; both are 5 feet 1 inch tall.

Jordan also likes rock climbing and skiing. Both like spending time online.

Jordan, however, does NOT read novels.

"When I am reading a novel, you can almost bet it's something for school," he says. "If I'm reading something on my own time, chances are it's about math."

The subjects he really loathes are gym and English and history.

This year, he is taking four AP courses and an online college math course. He's a member of the school's quiz bowl team, and he plays the vibraphone.

Jordan was a member of an award-winning Manheim Township Junior Engineering Technical Society team at the state level.

After seventh grade, Jordan left the New School of Lancaster and started at Manheim Township High School as a freshman.

He went right past the eighth grade.

(At the New School, he skipped kindergarten.)

So, he never stepped foot in a middle school.

That was no loss.

Eric Sherman likes to ski, and he also harbors a love of flying remote-control airplanes.

The junior scientist is the son of Donald and Donna Sherman, of Farmland Drive, Ephrata.

Eric has always been a "wise owl," his mother says. He has entertained many interests in his life.

At 7, he started a butterfly farm in the garage. At 9, he fell in love with archery. Not only could he tell others about the sport, he could also explain the physics behind it, Mrs. Sherman says.

Like Jordan, Eric does not read fiction unless it's required for school.

"I don't read books," he says. "When I do read, I would much rather read the "American Journal of Human Genetics."

Eric zoomed ahead in elementary school. He combined first grade and second grade and fourth grade and fifth grade.

That helped keep Eric engaged, his mother says.

But exceptionally gifted students still yearn for more, she explained.

Eric honed his love of science even more through the Lancaster Science & Engineering Fair.

Sherman was the grand champion in 2007 and 2006, and he won top honors in the junior division in 2005 and in 2004.

In 2008, he was the reserve champion.

His work has been published in the "American Journal of Human Genetics."

This year, he didn't participate in the science fair.

He has decided to devote his time to volunteer research work at the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, a nonprofit medical and diagnostic service for children born with inherited metabolic disorders. Dr. D. Holmes Morton is the director.

"It's in the middle of a cornfield," Eric says. It also has a system that can examine 10,000 parts of someone's genome, he says.

There, he's working on creating a cheaper and faster way to locate matches for bone-marrow transplants for babies born without immune systems.

"Without a bone-marrow transplant, it's almost guaranteed to be fatal," he said. "I could end up giving these kids a full and healthy life."

The three teens look ahead to the future.

Ben says he knows what he wants to do.

He wants to go to Yale and Harvard, and he wants to work in finance. Ben has been fascinated with economics, his mother says.

Jordan, however, feels less sure.

Maybe he will run a huge corporation, but he's not sure he would like it.

He might go into academia.

"Maybe physics research. I don't know," Jordan says.

Eric, who graduates soon, declined to say what schools he's considering.

He wants to pursue genetics research and earn a doctorate or a medical degree. There is a program in which a person can earn both.

"It's insanely competitive," he says.


Staff writer Robyn Meadows can be reached at rmeadows@LNPnews.com or 481-6025.