South student achieves perfect score on ACT

PARKERSBURG - A Parkersburg South High School junior achieved a perfect score on the ACT exam.

Taylor Bush, 17, retook the exam in April after getting a composite score of 34 in the fall.

"I decided to take it again because I thought I could do better," she said.

When the results came back, Bush had achieved a composite score of 36, the only perfect score in West Virginia for the spring of 2009 and one of only 268 perfect scores in the U.S. and abroad for that exam, according to Richard Ferguson, chief executive officer of ACT.

After she took the exam, "I tried not to let myself think about it. When the scores came out, I was pretty surprised and happy," she said.

The ACT is divided into four sections: English, math, reading and science.

Each section receives a score of 1-36, with all four scores being averaged as a composite score.

Bush's mother Gwen Bush said the experience was a bit nerve wracking.

"I thought, possibly, after getting a 34 she could score lower on the test. I didn't want her to be disappointed," said Gwen Bush.

When the perfect score was revealed, "I couldn't believe it. I was so excited. She had a friend at the house with her and it was bedlam. She was shaking."

Taylor Bush's accomplishment might not seem surprising to some.

A straight-A student, she completed three Advanced Placement courses this year at Parkersburg South, plays varsity soccer and tennis, was first-time all-state in soccer, a member of Key Club, several national honor society groups and volunteers at Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital and Camp Echo.

Sue Woodward, spokeswoman for Wood County Schools, said the district has no recent records of any student achieving a perfect score on the ACT exam.

Woodward said there is a possibility those records simply might not have reached the main office, but several top administrators with Wood County Schools said they believed this was a first for the school system.

"No one here can remember a student getting a perfect score on the ACT," Woodward said.

Now Taylor Bush plans to turn her attention to the SAT exam, where she scored a composite 1,490 on the math and English portions of that test.

"My goal was to break 1,500, so I will probably take that one again," she said.

Taylor Bush begins her senior year at Parkersburg South this fall and said she hopes after graduation to study biology and possibly genetics.