Seventeen-year-old Campion College student Johan Gordon has made history by becoming the first Jamaican to earn a perfect 36 score in the American College Testing (ACT) examination.

ACT, though less popular than the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), is a standardised test used for college admissions in the United States. Gordon’s perfect ACT 36 is equivalent to the SAT’s perfect 1,600.

“Honestly, I was really, really surprised when I saw the scores because I genuinely wasn’t expecting it. When I saw the 36, I was like ‘oh, they’re just showing me the highest score that I could get, like how much it’s out of’ and then I realised that it was saying ‘this is your score’ and I was actually blown away. I think I shed a few tears,” Gordon told the Jamaica Observer.

According to renowned Jamaican academician Dr Dennis Minott, who tutored Gordon through his A-QuEST programme, this has never been achieved by a Jamaican student in neither the ACT nor SAT.

“I do not believe that anybody in Jamaica has ever scored as high a score in SAT or ACT because there is an exact concordance that’s published every year by both organisations, and I know of one student who did that, but that person didn’t do it in Jamaica,” Minott told the Observer.

In 2011, 16-year-old Damien Chang — who was attending Woodberry Forest School in Madison County, Virginia — became the first Jamaican to obtain a perfect SAT 1,600 score. Before him, the top mark was set at 1,570 by Manchester High School student Romero Heyman.

“So his score is a first for Jamaica and I suspect for the entire Caribbean — perhaps somebody has equalled it, but I don’t know of that,” Minott said.

Minott’s A-QuEST programme helps to prepare top Jamaican students for colleges abroad. Gordon credited its resources along with Minott’s guidance for his success in the examination.

“Without him, I don’t think I would have done so well. He has also been quite instrumental in guiding me through the college application process on a whole,” he said.

Gordon, who is in his second year of sixth form, is currently looking at a few Ivy League universities like Columbia and Brown, among others including Stanford, where he hopes to study biology or international relations (IR).

“In my first year of sixth form, I had this amazing biology teacher…and she really kind of deepened my love for biology. She was just such a good teacher and because of her I actually placed eighth in Jamaica for biology,” [in the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination Unit One] Gordon said, highlighting the core of his love for the science subject.

“IR I decided on pretty recently. I was kind of reflecting and I realised how much I’ve always liked languages. I came first in the island for French for CSEC (Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate) and ninth in the Caribbean in 2018. I found out in November that I placed fourth in the region and third in Jamaica for Spanish CAPE Unit One. I’ve always liked the languages from a very young age. I just loved how I was able to connect with other cultures through my language studies and I thought diplomacy and that kind of stuff would be cool, ’cause you’re kind of being a bridge between nations,” he continued.

Gordon is also a member of Campion’s volleyball team and has been doing theatre professionally for about three years now with Jamaica Musical Theatre Company (JMTC).

“For a long time, since like fifth grade, I really was attracted to the idea of theatre and just having this space to like express yourself and just be passionate about something. Something I love about theatre is that even if you have the smallest line or one or two lines on the stage, that one line can actually be just as powerful as the longest monologue, as long as you just make the effort to give 100 per cent and commit to that line, so it’s been really fun,” the high achiever said.

Gordon was a part of JMTC’s 2018 production Beauty and the Beast in which he played Cogsworth the Clock, and the 2019 production of Annie in which he was one of the orphans.

But Gordon said his favourite character so far is Bert in JMTC’s upcoming production of Mary Poppins.

“Technically, he’d be considered poor and homeless, but he kinds of realises that material possessions aren’t necessarily what make him happy, and I think that’s a great attitude to have — that you don’t really have to be materialistic to actually have happiness,” he said.

Describing young Gordon as playful, his father, Hugh, said from an early stage he always exhibited excellent memory.

“I feel very pleased that he has set himself to do well and that he has done well. It is a joy to see that he is pursuing interests in various areas of life, not just in academics; otherwise he has pursued interest in sports, in the dramatic arts and leadership at school. So that makes us [both parents] feel very pleased and happy for him,” his father said.

“The hope is that he will do excellent at whatever he sets himself to do and whatever career he lives to pursue. We encourage him to pursue and to strive for excellence in all things,” his father added.