Astonishing ACT Perfect Scores at Walnut Hills High School

Seventeen students from Walnut Hills in Ohio earned a top score of 36 on the ACT this year. This is an achievement that is believed to be highly unusual and has never been done before. The high achieving six-year public college preparatory school in Cincinnati, posted the news on its website. The announcements said nine juniors and eight seniors received a “perfect” score, which is a composite of 36 on all four mandatory parts of the ACT.

The four parts on the ACT includes English, math, reading and science. The ACT is scored on a scale of 1 to 36. According to the ACT reports on its website, the average national score for 2018 was 20.8. However, achieving a top score of 36 doesn’t mean all the questions were answered correctly.

How Unusual Is This?

The ACT organization doesn’t track how many perfect scores come from a single school. According to ACT spokesman Edward Colby, about 0.2 percent of students nationwide who took the exam earned a 36 in 2018. However, they don’t keep statistics on the number of students per high school that have earned a 36 on any given test date or in any given year. This makes it hard to even determine how unusual that is and depends on how big the high school is.

Walnut Hills’ Contribution to Perfect ACT Scores

Walnut Hills is a high school that has students from grades 7 through 12 and has 2,400 students. According to its website this high school is in the top 100 high school in the U.S. News & World Report listing. In that listing Walnut Hills is listed as the leading high school in Ohio. The school’s website reported that 87 percent of graduates leave with college credits because they took college-level courses in high school. Walnut Hills offers the following programs to their students:

• Classical Program - requiring three years of Latin for incoming 7th and 8th graders

• Advanced Placement Program – offers 30 courses – more than any other school in the nation.

• Cultural Arts Program – five dramatic/musical productions each year, AP studio art, and award-winning bands and orchestra.

• 90 competitive sports teams.

• 50 extra-curricular activities.

• Science and Foreign Language Competitions – National Mathematics Examination, First Lego Robotics, the Model United Nations, and the National Scholastic Art and Writing competition.

Thirty percent of the school’s students are black, 7 percent are of two or more races, 5 percent are Asian, 2 percent are Hispanic, most of the rest are white and 19 percent are economically disadvantaged.

What Do You Need to Do to Get a Perfect 36 ACT Score?

You need to put ACT prep as one of your top priorities in life, overcoming watching Netflix or hanging out with friends. One of most important pieces in being successful on the ACT and in all aspects of life is motivation. Think of all the reasons you want a perfect score and use it to motivate yourself every study session. Here are a few tips on getting a perfect ACT score:

Do High- Quality Practice Tests – In the ACT there’s a specific format to each section, and it tests concepts in ways that are likely different from what you’ve studied in school. It also tends to trick you with a lot of bait wrong answers. You’ll need the highest-quality practice materials, because the ACT has questions that are twisted in a particular way. You need to train in exactly the way they’re twisted so you learn the patterns. Take official ACT practice tests and teach yourself from your mistakes.

Focus on Quality – Don’t focus on just getting the work done, you must understand your weaknesses. Try getting a ACT prep tutor to guide you, so you can get the most out of your studying and make it as efficient as possible.

Understand Your Mistakes – You need to understand exactly why you missed a question, so you won’t make that same mistake over and over again. On the practice test, mark every question that you’re even slightly unsure about. When you grade your test or quiz, review every single question that you marked, and every incorrect question. Write down the gist of the question, why you missed it, and what you’ll do to avoid that same mistake.

Find Patterns in Your Weaknesses – If you’re keeping track of your mistakes, now you’ll be able to start finding patterns to your weaknesses. Focusing on your weaknesses is important because you have a limited amount of time to study and you need to spend that time on the areas that will get you the biggest score improvement. Try to focus on what works best for you.

Double Check Your Answers – Finish each section ahead of time to give yourself time to double check your answers. As you get better at the ACT, this will be easier to accomplish. If you see you aren’t getting anywhere on a question, skip it and get back to it.

Source:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/04/25/students-one-high-school-get-perfect-scores-act/