Nearly two dozen students at a single Chicago high school got a perfect score on the ACT.
The 23 teenagers — nearly 5% of the junior class at Whitney Young Magnet High School — were honored in a special ceremony Monday for the monumental achievement.
“Today is one of those rare, extraordinary moments in a school’s history when we get to pause and celebrate academic greatness,” Rickey Harris, the school’s principal, said at the ceremony.
Just 125 students across the Windy City achieved the feat this year, according to preliminary ACT data obtained by Fox 32.
Typically, just 1% of high schoolers take home the perfect score of 36 per year.
But at Whitney Young Magnet, the students had been aiming for the goal for months.
“I’ve been preparing for about the last year, kind of like intermittently,” Bennett Star told WBTV-3.
“I took about eight practice tests just to practice it and prepare for it.”
Mila Martinez said her father was simply overjoyed when he heard the news.
“He started crying. He’s from Puerto Rico. He never took the ACT, so for our family, it’s a huge accomplishment,” she told the outlet.
Harris said the student’s victory was in line with what is expected at the magnet school, which in 2018 had five students who achieved the feat.
He compared them to legendary Michael Jordan, who famously sported the number 23.
“Just like MJ, our 23 didn’t settle for average,” Harris added.
“Michael Jordan once said, ‘I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come.’ Today, you all are living proof of that.”
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