Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / Notre Dame Prep student gets a perfect 36 on the ACT test, one of only five in the state
Notre Dame Prep student gets a perfect 36 on the ACT test, one of only five in the state
by Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published August 22, 2008
Detroit — A Notre Dame Preparatory School student is one of five students in the state, and the only one at a Catholic school, to earn a perfect score when he took the ACT college placement test in April.
Ryan McIntosh, 17, of Rochester Hills, actually earned the perfect score of 36 on his second take of the test — he’d gotten a 34 the first try, and had already signed up for a re-take so he decided to go ahead and take it again. He thought he did worse on the second try, he said — until he got his results.
He was at a picnic for his school’s robotics team, The Killer Bees, when his mother, Terri, kept calling his cell phone. He finally answered and she told him the news, he said. “She was excited,” he recalls.
Except for a practice test at school and taking the ACT the first time, McIntosh said he didn’t do much to try to get a high score. “All that I did to prepare for the test was get a good night’s sleep the night before,” he said.
Dana Engelbert, of the ACT Media Relations office, said about 6,500 tests were administered in Michigan on the April test date, with nearly half a million administered nationwide. Four other students earned the top score that day, but none of the others attend a Catholic school. In all, 172 students nationwide earned a 36 that day, which figures out to about one-tenth of 1 percent of students who take the test earn the top score.
Engelbert also pointed out that a 36 is not necessarily a “perfect” score, as it is possible to miss a couple of questions and still earn a 36.
McIntosh is a senior in this fall, and besides robotics is involved in all the school’s bands — symphony, jazz, marching — as a saxophone player, the school’s new Ultimate Frisbee club, and National Honor Society.
He’s a straight-A student, with a grade point average higher than 4.0 because of all the advanced placement classes he’s taken, he explained. His class schedule for the fall will include AP Spanish, AP calculus, AP literature, AP social studies and AP biology, and he’d take more except he’s run out of math classes to take, he said. However, he won’t be his class’s valedictorian, because he has fellow students who have taken more AP courses than he, and as a result have a higher overall GPA.
McIntosh’s classes have focused on math and science courses, he said, although he’s not sure what he wants to do career-wise. He’s considered engineering, medicine and dentistry so far.
Earlier this summer, he toured several colleges to get an idea of where he wanted to attend. Among them was Michigan State University, where he was introduced to the Green Carpet honors program.
“The dean of admissions already knew who I was when I got there,” he said.
He also visited Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Massachusetts Institute if Technology, Cambridge, and Harvard University, Cambridge and Boston, and Boston College, a Jesuit school. He said after visiting Boston he’d like to go to college there, but he’s taking the advice of his guidance counselor and applying to as many colleges as he can.
Some of the schools he looked at require freshmen to declare a major right away, and he wants to take some general courses first until he gets a feel for what he wants to study, he said.
At college, he’d like to play Ultimate Frisbee, and perhaps get involved in band. Until then, he was looking forward to band camp — “Seniors at band camp have more fun than anyone else at band camp,” he said — and enjoying his year as a senior after school started yesterday.
McIntosh, a member of St. Andrew Parish, Rochester, attended public schools through second grade before enrolling at Holy Family Regional School. He attributed the fact he did so well on his ACT to his challenging Catholic education.
He enjoys the harder classes, and believes the quality of teaching is much higher, too. Plus, Notre Dame students take a required religion class every year, whether it’s Old Testament or morality.
“We learn more about, basically, everything,” he said. “I know it helped.”
Notre Dame Prep school’s principal, Fr. Joe Hindelang, sm, said that although McIntosh is “one of many impressive students” at the school, not many earn a top score on the ACT.
“Ryan’s teachers and I are very proud of his outstanding achievement on the ACT,” he said. “It is great that a friendly, down-to-earth young man with a variety of interests can also be so intelligent. We are pleased that he sets high goals for himself but also looks for ways to help others.”
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