East Senior Earns Perfect ACT Score

Less than half of one percent of all students receive a perfect ACT score. In 2020, approximately 1.67 million students took the ACT, and less than 6,000 earned the top composite score of 36.

Add the name of Bellevue East High School senior Seth Pennell to the list.

Pennel, son of Daniel and Carolyn Pennell, received the news this past summer after taking the exam when he was a junior. “When I found out what my score was, I was surprised. I only expected to get a 30 because of my previous pre-ACT score”, Pennell said.

Seth’s mother, Carolyn added, “I knew he would score high, but I was very surprised too. We are very proud of Seth. He has worked hard.”

Carolyn told the good news to Seth’s father. “When Carolyn told me, I didn’t believe it! I thought, ‘nobody gets perfect scores.’ I knew Seth would get a high score, but a perfect score is amazing.”

Bellevue East principal Dr. Jeffrey Wagner said it didn’t surprise him. “As soon as Seth walked into the school as a freshman, I knew he was a high achieving academic student. We had to make some creative scheduling decisions his first year with math because Seth was very advanced, and we wanted to make sure we could offer the courses and level of math he needed to be challenged. He got through that and has been on an accelerated academic path ever since.”

Seth thought the Reading section of the exam was the most challenging due to the lengths of each passage. He had the most confidence in the Math section due to his experiences taking Advanced Math courses.

After graduation, Seth plans to attend the University of Nebraska-Omaha for two years while exploring engineering options. Once he has decided what field of engineering interests him the most, he will transfer to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to complete his degree. 

Dr. Wagner said this is the third student from Bellevue East to receive a perfect ACT score in the past three years. “I think it says a lot about the student, but having a school with a wide variety of advanced classes, academic programs focused on providing students opportunities to compete and challenge themselves academically, and great teachers to support individual student needs certainly helps students be successful. We have had a really good history with students scoring well on the ACT.”