MHS rising senior Londyn Elmer achieves perfect 36 on ACT

About one-quarter of 1% of students who take the ACT earn a top score. In the U.S. high school graduating class of 2022, only 3,376 out of 1.34 million students who took the ACT earned a top composite score of 36.  Morgan High rising senior, Londyn Elmer, is now part of that elite group.  On March 8, Elmer took the test with all of the members of the Class of 2024 at Morgan High during the State ACT testing day.  When her scores came back in April, she was very pleasantly surprised.

“When I got my scores, I was shocked.  I didn’t feel that I had done that well,” Elmer reported.

“I felt pretty good about math and science, and I know that I got the reading score that I did because of Mrs. Romero. She helped me a lot with reading and English,” Elmer explained.

Elmer, daughter of Becca and Phill Elmer of Morgan, not only does well academically at Morgan High, but she is also involved in several additional activities.  She recently played a newsie in Morgan High Theater Department’s production of Newsies and has garnered the role of Amy March in the fall musical presentation of Little Women.  Elmer loves to sing and dance.  She has danced since she was four years old and sang in the MHS Ovation and Millennial choirs.

“It is a lot easier to express myself through dance, music and theater than academics.  Academics don’t give you a lot of chances to show your personality, and I really enjoy that side of the arts,” Elmer noted.

In the spring, Elmer can be found on the track throwing discus and occasionally shot put.  She placed second at the Region 13 tournament in discus and was a member of the 2023 Girls State Championship track team. She has lettered in track for two years.

“I was a little wary about doing track at first, but then my cousin Brownyn and Coach Reil encouraged me to do it, and it has been one of the best things that I’ve done in high school. Coach Reil really helped me find my favorite event: discus.  I appreciate all of her encouragement,” Elmer related. 

“All of the track coaches are incredible.  They always encourage us to put academics first and are always the first ones to congratulate someone on a victory whether it is track-related or not.  They were among the earliest to know my score and were just as excited as I was.”  

In between her dancing, singing and throwing, Elmer has accumulated an impressive 4.0 GPA taking difficult classes such as AP Biology and AP Chemistry, and she has participated in the DATC Automation and Robotics program since her freshman year.  Although she does well in all of her classes, Elmer’s first love is science.  “I want to be a biomedical engineer, I think,” Elmer shared.  “There are so many exciting directions I could go in science. I just want to find new ways to help the world.”

Seeing the world is another of Elmer’s passions.  She recently returned from a two week tour of Italy and Greece.  “Oddly, the world seems like a much smaller place when you have traveled across the globe.  I was able to see so many different people and cultures.”

“The Coliseum in Rome was my favorite place we visited because you could see so much history and all of the different parts of the building that came together to produce such a magnificent piece of architecture.”

Elmer hopes her perfect score on the ACT will parlay into acceptance at an Ivy League school like Harvard or MIT.  She hopes to pursue her dreams of becoming a scientist who can make the world a better place among the best scholars in the US.

“I’m grateful to my parents who alway support me but never push me too hard. They let me find my own way.  Learning things on my own has helped me learn more than if my parents had forced me into activities.  I encourage parents to allow their children to find their own interests and then support them as they discover their passions,” Elmer concluded.

The ACT consists of tests in English, mathematics, reading and science, each scored on a scale of 1–36. A student's composite score is the average of the four test scores. The score for ACT’s optional writing test is reported separately and is not included within the ACT composite score.

“Earning a top score on the ACT is a remarkable achievement,” said ACT CEO Janet Godwin. “A student’s exceptional score of 36 will provide any college or university with ample evidence of their readiness for the academic rigors that lie ahead.”

The ACT is a curriculum-based achievement exam that measures what students have learned in school. Students who earn a 36 composite score have likely mastered all of the skills and  knowledge they will need to succeed in first-year college courses in the core subject areas.

*Portions of this article were taken from a press release distributed by the ACT. λ