Schools
Oakdale Patch Whiz Kid: Tartan’s Zachariah Neville Gets Perfect ACT Score
Neville was also named a National Merit Commended Scholar.
Oakdale Patch Whiz Kid of the Week: Zachariah Neville
School:
Accomplishment: Neville was a National Merit Commended Scholar and scored a perfect 36 on his ACT.
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Key to Awesomeness: With an ACT score of 34, Zachariah Neville had already scored in the top 1 percent of test-takers in his first attempt at the college entrance exam in April. Content with his score, he said he probably wouldn’t have taken the test again without his parents' encouragement. They told him if he tried again, he might get a perfect score, he said. So, he studied one of those ACT preparation guidebooks and took the test again in September.
It turned out, his parents were right.
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“We were all happy,” he said of his 36 score. Neville said the advanced classes he’d already taken were good preparation for the test.
Already when Neville was in fifth grade, he said, his teacher saw he was skilled in math, and put him in a group that worked on higher-level problems. He also joined Math Masters that year, and then the math team in sixth grade.
“I really started realizing I like math,” he said. He's drawn to its black-and-white nature, he said.
“It’s clear cut," he said. "There’s a right and there’s a wrong. It’s not open to interpretation.”
Now he’s in Calculus 3 at Concordia University through Post-Secondary Enrollment Options, and he’s also taking a literature class there. He said he hopes to have 16 to 20 college credits completed when he graduates from high school.
After that, he said he’d like to attend a college in the Midwest—possibly Washington University in St. Louis—and study computer science or mathematics.
In addition to the ACT score, Neville was recognized as a National Merit Commended Scholar for his score on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
Along with his schoolwork, Neville is the treasurer of Tartan’s National Honor Society, on the math and knowledge bowl teams and works on the weekends at McDonald’s on Century Avenue in Maplewood.
He said thinking about the future keeps him motivated to work hard in school.
“I realize education is important for a lot of careers,” he said. “I figure if I do all this hard work now it’ll pay off later.”
