Indiana teen is only student in the world to receive perfect AP Calculus exam score this past spring

September 28, 2022

An Indiana teen was the only student in the world to receive a perfect score on the Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus AB exam this past spring.

Felix Zhang, who is currently a junior at Penn High School in Mishawaka, Indiana, scored all 108 possible points on the exam as a sophomore, a feat that not even he was expecting to accomplish.

“Obviously I wanted to do well on it, and I prepared a lot but I never thought about getting a perfect score before so, that was a nice surprise,” Zhang told 16 News Now.

Felix is not the only member of the family with quantitative gifts. Both of his parents teach university-level mathematics: his father at the University of Notre Dame and his mother at Indiana University South Bend.

Approximately 270,000 students took the AP Calculus AB exam administered in May. While 20 percent of the students received a five — the highest possible mark for the exam — Zhang was the only one to receive a perfect score.

“We applaud Felix’s hard work and the AP teacher responsible for engaging students and enabling them to excel in a college-level course,” head of the Advanced Placement Program Trevor Packer said in an email.

AP classes and exams are administered to help students earn admissions to universities, prepare them for the heavier workloads offered at institutions of higher education and gain credit for college-level courses in high school.

“When you take an AP Calculus course in high school, you’re essentially taking the first year of Calculus as a college student,” Penn High School Principal Sean Gailher said in a press release. “If we can expose them at the high school level and help them experience the rigor and the challenge and be successful, we know they’re going to be successful when they leave our walls.”

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