NORWICH – For decades, home-schooling has been a controversial issue in education, with advocates citing the benefits of a customized curriculum and its lower cost per student, while opponents point out the absence of social interaction and a potential lack of academic standards.

For 16-year-old Luke Shaver, the experience has been an extremely positive one and – academically speaking – he’s set the bar pretty high.

Currently in the third quarter of his fifth year as a home-schooled student, Shaver recently discovered he’d scored higher than 95 percent of college-bound high school juniors nationwide on his PSAT exam in October. On the exam’s writing section, he scored higher than 98 percent of American juniors, with a total score of 196 out of a possible 240.

To say he was surprised is an understatement, according to his parents.