Gail Oudekerk

Conway senior makes perfect ACT, SAT scores

Gail Oudekerk, a senior at Conway High School, made a perfect score on both the ACT and SAT, a feat that district officials don’t remember another student achieving. High school counselor Jeannie Moore called it “amazing.” Oudekerk credited her parents for instilling a love of reading in her, the “awesome” school district and luck.
Gail Oudekerk, a senior at Conway High School, made a perfect score on both the ACT and SAT, a feat that district officials don’t remember another student achieving. High school counselor Jeannie Moore called it “amazing.” Oudekerk credited her parents for instilling a love of reading in her, the “awesome” school district and luck.

High School senior Gail Oudekerk has accomplished a feat that may be a first in the Conway School District — she earned perfect scores on the ACT and SAT.

“I just got lucky,” she said.

Color her humble. Intelligence obviously plays a role in those test results, but the 16-year-old downplays that.

Conway Superintendent Greg Murry and Heather Kendrick, district communications specialist, said that while there is no official documentation, they haven’t heard of another student who scored perfectly on both exams.

Oudekerk said test scores don’t define a person.

“At the end of the day, I filled out bubbles correctly. I have friends who are amazing artists and photographers and athletes, and they sometimes feel bad about themselves” because of testing.

It’s not that Oudekerk doesn’t appreciate her scores.

“The college admissions process is surrounded by a lot of stress, ‘Do this, do that,’” she said. “[The top scores] just removed one of those sources of stress.”

Oudekerk took the ACT first and earned a 35. The school offered the test a second time, so Oudekerk said she figured, “Why not?”

She made a perfect 36, which meant she missed three or fewer questions.

“Oh, my goodness. I was shocked,” she said. “It was a really nice surprise because of all the opportunities it opened up.”

On the SAT, she earned a perfect score of 1,600, and she missed one question. It was in reading, which is “odd,” she said, because reading is “more my thing than math, certainly.”

The teenager, who has a 4.2 grade-point average, took the SAT in August to confirm her PSAT score that qualified her as a National Merit Semifinalist. The SAT confirmed her score all right.

Taking the SAT took her about five hours, including the writing portion, which she opted to do.

“I thought, ‘What’s the harm?’ Except the psychological harm,’” Oudekerk said, laughing.

“The SAT [perfect score] was a big surprise,” she said.

She was sitting in Advanced Placement psychology at the end of the day when she got an email from SAT and pulled up the website.

“I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Mrs. Reed! You won’t believe what I just found out!’”

Her teacher, Margaret Reed, told Oudekerk to call her mother to give her the good news.

Oudekerk said she and her mother have a great relationship and like to tease each other.

“Her first reaction was to call me ‘a freak of nature,’” Oudekerk said.

Having taken both the ACT and SAT, she doesn’t consider one test harder than the other.

“I’d characterize everything as miserable,” she said with a laugh.

In addition to luck, the student attributes her success to excellent teachers, hard work and a love of reading.

“One thing I’ve always really enjoyed and ascribed my success to, at a very early age, I was read to all the time,” Oudekerk said.

She is the daughter of Wayne Oudekerk, a professor of German at Hendrix College in Conway, and Diane Robinson, director of the Office of Research and Justice Statistics at the Arkansas Administrative Office of the Courts in Little Rock.

Gail Oudekerk, an only child, said her parents read to her from the time she was a baby.

She said that in middle school, “I finished a novel every single day. My parents said, ‘Don’t you ever pay attention?’ I said, ‘Yes, but I also read.’”

They were proud of their daughter’s perfect scores, but Wayne Oudekerk said he “was not overly surprised because she’s always been a hard worker.”

“My parents have always valued hard work way over perfection,” Gail said.

Oudekerk spent her first- and eighth-grade years in Germany with her parents because her father has a sabbatical from Hendrix every seven years.

She credits her eighth-grade experience with increasing her tenacity to face educational challenges, as well as creating more empathy. (When she was in the eighth grade was also the last time she cut her hair.)

Oudekerk said she’d only had “rudimentary German” in seventh grade, and the classes she took in Germany were all in the native language. The first few months were hard, and she was shy socially, she said.

“Sometimes I felt lonely and frustrated. By the end of the year, I was flying through. I had a friend I was picnicking in the vineyards with,” she said, sitting at a Wampus Cat-blue picnic table on the high school campus.

Having never struggled academically, “it really gave me an insight into what that was like” and helped her empathize with others.

“It changed the way I learned,” she said. “It was an amazing experience.”

Oudekerk said she had to take algebra online to stay caught up with the American educational standards.

“All of my teachers have been so supportive, encouraging us to learn for learning’s sake, not just for standardized tests,” she said. “And that they emphasized kindness, as well as achievement, is something I’m also grateful for.”

She learned those lessons well, Reed said.

“What is exceptional about Gail is not that she is brilliant, but that she is kind and empathetic, and those are things that are not measurable on the ACT or SAT,” Reed said. “I am so proud of the young woman and student she has become and look forward to seeing her continue to grow.”

Oudekerk is involved in several organizations. A violinist, she’s in the Conway High School orchestra and chamber orchestra.

“I’m lucky and honored to be concert master this year,” she said. That mean’s she’s first violin in those orchestras and leads her section. Oudekerk said she has looked up to concert masters in the past.

“It’s humbling and exciting to think I’d have the mentor role they’ve had for me,” she said.

Oudekerk is a member of the Model U.N. Club and won an Outstanding Delegate Award at a recent conference. She’s also a member of the National Honor Society, the Young Democrats and the French Honorary Society.

“I have never had a student who scored a perfect score on both tests,” said Jeannie Moore, Oudekerk’s high school counselor. “It’s pretty rare and exciting.”

Oudekerk doesn’t know what career path she’ll take, but she plans to take a gap year after high school to do one of two things.

Applying for the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange is one option. It is a scholarship program jointly funded and administered by the United States and German governments that provides a year of academic or vocational training and community-service opportunities. Students stay with host families.

She’s also interested in a program of the German government in which young people volunteer with the elderly or children, or in places such as museums “to get experience

and give back. My dream would be to do that in Berlin,” Oudekerk said.

The colleges to which she’s applied include Hendrix, as well as Brown University, Haverford College, Rhodes College, Rice University, Stanford University and Swarthmore College.

Oudekerk said her mother’s rule is she has to be “within three hours of someone who loves me.” Only Stanford violates that rule.

A common piece of advice for students filling out college applications is to be unique.

“Having perfect scores on both will definitely help me stand out,” Oudekerk said. “Honestly, the fact that I don’t have to take them again is the best.”

There’s no improving on perfection.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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