Indiana high school junior becomes only student in the world to earn a perfect score on AP Calculus exam

An Indiana high school student received a perfect score on the Advanced Placement Calculus AB exam this spring, the only student in the world to achieve such a feat.

Felix Zhang, currently a junior at Penn High School in Mishawaka, Indiana, aced the test with 108 points out of the 108 points possible. 

The College Board, which administers the AP exams, informed Principal Sean Galiher Zhang earned a perfect score of five, as AP exams are scored from one to five, and that he was the only student in the world to earn every possible point.

“This outstanding accomplishment is likely a direct reflection of the top-quality education being offered at Penn High School,” Head of the Advanced Placement Program Trevor Packer said in an email to the principal. “We applaud Felix’s hard work and the AP teacher responsible for engaging students and enabling them to excel in a college-level course.”

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Zhang was one of 270,000 students worldwide to have taken the AP exam in May 2022, when he was just a sophomore. About 20% of students who took the test at the time earned a score of five, the largest percentage since 2016.

“I felt pretty confident knowing that I knew what to do on the test, but there was always a chance I would make a small error or something,” he told reporters. “So I wasn’t really expecting to see a perfect score. And that was pretty surprising to me because I felt like, there’s a lot of other people out there who probably perform very well on this test, and I’m pretty surprised that no one else got a perfect score.”

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AP exams are used to help students earn college admissions, as well as scholarships and other financial aid.  Colleges and universities around the world receive AP scores for higher education.

“There’s a lot of strategies that teachers can put in place to help students learn,” Galiher said in a press release. “But when you have kids scoring at a five, you know that the curriculum is intentional, it’s focused, the kids are engaged and there is a collaborative environment.” 

“When you take an AP Calculus course in high school, you’re essentially taking the first year of Calculus as a college student; and that’s the whole reason why we push dual credit and AP type courses here at Penn High School,” he continued. “We want students to feel prepared so they can succeed in college and finish college, in four years at least. So 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.”