NLRHS junior Jonah Pulliam is in a class where only a fraction can boast. Pulliam has scored a 36 on the ACT, which is the highest score possible.
“It was unreal. I couldn’t believe that it actually happened. I’ve been working on it for a while. I took it the first time in ninth grade and got a 28 and since then I’ve been just steadily improving,” Pulliam said.
Pulliam earned this score in March, when all juniors at the school took the college entrance exam. It was his fourth time taking the exam.
He developed a study method and stuck to it.
“I reviewed notes from other classes. The only studying that I did was taking some practice exams. I used some of the release tests and went through them, marked my answers, and checked them against the answer key to see what I got wrong and worked on that specifically,” he said.
Earning a top score on a standardized test is nothing new for Pulliam. Back in November, he got a perfect score on the P-SAT. He was recognized by the Superintendent and Board of Education for accomplishing the rare feat.
Pulliam is an active student. He is on the Cross Country and Track & Field teams. He is also a member of Mu Alpha Theta and the North Little Rock Mayor’s Youth Council. Pulliam is an Advanced Placement Scholar, an honor that goes to students who scored a 3 or higher on three or more Advanced Placement exams.
This summer, Pulliam will represent the district at Arkansas Boys State and at Arkansas Governor’s School. At Arkansas Governor’s School, his area of study will be mathematics.
After graduation, Pulliam plans to attend college to study applied math or finance and pursue a career in one of those fields. He is undecided about the college he would like to attend.
The ACT is a multiple-choice exam with four sections: English, mathematics, reading, and science. In addition, students can take a writing test, but it is optional. The score range for each of the four sections is 1 through 36. The composite score is the average of the four test scores rounded to the nearest whole number. According to ACT, more than 1.34 million students in the Class of 2022 took the ACT.