Making the grade: Hinsdale South students score perfect 36s on the ACT
Making the grade: Hinsdale South students score perfect 36s on the ACT
Two Hinsdale South High School seniors, Sophia Chen and Vasanth Ranganathan, earned perfect 36 ACT scores after months of preparation, joining a third classmate to give the school three students with perfect scores.
HINSDALE - Perfection is hard to measure.
Sometimes, you can hear it.
Hinsdale South High School senior Vasanth Ranganathan has spent years studying Indian classical music, a passion that started with the music his father played when he was young.
"This is like a composition created by a composer named Syama Sastri," Ranganathan said after singing part of one of his favorites. "This song is just very dear to my heart."
Classmate Sophia Chen has a list of her own.
"I play golf. I'm on the Science Olympiad team. I am one of the editors-in-chief of our school newspaper here. I'm in the marching band," Chen said.
Ranganathan competes in Science Olympiad and math team and is also working with his cousin on an app designed to connect volunteers with organizations looking for help.
They’re talented. They’re busy. They’re 17.
And there’s one number they have in common that tends to stop people mid-sentence: 36.
Three perfect scores, one high school
The backstory:
Thirty-six is the highest possible composite score on the ACT, and Chen and Ranganathan both earned it during their junior year.
They aren't alone at Hinsdale South. The school has three students who earned perfect ACT scores. FOX Chicago interviewed two of them.
For Chen and Ranganathan, getting to 36 meant months of preparation and roughly three hours of testing.
"The test is about three hours," Chen said, describing sections that included reading comprehension, grammar, math and science.
But here's the irony: Neither walked away feeling perfect.
Chen was second-guessing some of her math answers.
Ranganathan was dealing with a Chromebook that wasn't cooperating as other students finished around him.
"Everyone was like getting up and I'm still like frantically typing and kind of looking around," he recalled.
And while they landed on exactly the same final score, their academic strengths couldn't be more different.
"Reading and writing have always been my strongest subjects, but I really enjoy science," Chen said.
"I think I'm kind of the opposite," Ranganathan said. "Math and science is sort of my comfort zone."
Put them together and the strengths almost complete the ACT.
Three hours of testing, two digits
About two weeks later, the results arrived by email.
Chen was home from school when she saw hers.
"I checked my email and I was like, ‘Oh, like it's out,’" she recalled. "And I saw it and I showed my parents."
Three hours of testing had been reduced to two digits: 36.
Ranganathan received the same kind of email.
He just wasn't quite ready to open it.
"I was with my friends at the time... I got the email. But to be honest, I was too scared to open it," he said. "So I'm just like, I'll check it later."
Later came. He still didn't check.
"I went home, I still kind of kept putting it off," Ranganathan said. "And then that's when my mom sort of talked to me and she's like, ‘You're gonna have to check it at some point.’"
Mom won.
Another 36.
Ranganathan then took the score to his father.
"He kind of met me with like a blank stare, almost like it didn't register to him," Ranganathan recalled. "Then he's like, ‘Great. I'm really proud of you.’"
Some numbers take a second to sink in.
From first grade to perfect scores
Thirty-six isn't the only important number in their story.
There's also one.
As in first grade.
That's when Chen and Ranganathan say they first met.
"What grade did you guys start together?" FOX Chicago's Tia Ewing asked.
"First grade, yeah," Chen responded.
Now those first-graders are high school seniors preparing for college.
Chen is considering mechanical engineering and potentially intellectual property law.
Ranganathan is aiming about 2,000 miles west.
"My dream school would be like Stanford, so I'm definitely trying to aim high," he said. "We'll see where it goes."
So we gave them one more test
An ACT score can tell you something about two students. It can't tell you everything.
So FOX Chicago had one final exam for Chen and Ranganathan.
No math.
No science.
No grammar.
Pop culture.
Ewing asked who became the first artist to win the Grammy for Album of the Year four times.
"The Weeknd," Ranganathan guessed.
"Taylor Swift!" Ewing revealed.
"Oh, yeah, yeah," he responded.
Perfection, apparently, may have an Achilles' heel.
Then came another clue: Which famous performer is really named Aubrey Graham?
"Oh, The Weeknd," Ranganathan started, before immediately realizing things weren't going well. "No, no, no. Wait, am I tripping?"
A little.
The students who could conquer the ACT suddenly had a tougher subject.
Math? Check.
Science? Check.
Reading? Check.
Pop culture?
Let's just say it probably won't be on the college application.
At the end, Ewing asked the pair to grade themselves.
"Was it a perfect 36?" she asked.
"I think like a 32," Ranganathan said.
Chen wasn't willing to go quite that low.
"I think maybe a little higher than him," she said. "I'd take like a 34."
Two perfect ACT scores.
And finally, a test they couldn't quite ace.
The Source: The information in this report came from interviews with Hinsdale South High School students Sophia Chen and Vasanth Ranganathan conducted by FOX Chicago's Tia Ewing, along with details provided by Hinsdale South High School about the students' perfect ACT scores.