Perfection: Sarasota middle school student aces ACT

SARASOTA (FOX 13) - Julia Kourelakos was born to excel.  She could read at the age of 2; she knew her times tables at the age of 5.  Now, at the age of 13, she is acing the ACT.

"I was kind of expecting a nightmare test," she said.

The eighth grader from Pine View School in Sarasota took it last month on a whim.

"I did not prepare for this. I took one quarter of a practice test and went to see Rocky Horror the night before. I sort of went in blind," she said.

After completing it, Julia put it in the back of her mind -- until a month later, when her mom logged on to look at the results.

"My first assumption always is that I failed something. She was like, 'I have some news for you and your ACT score.' I said, 'Did I fail it?' She said, 'nope,'" she recalled.

Once again, this eighth grader had excelled. She scored a perfect 36 on the ACT.

"I am kind of in shock," she continued.  "I called my mother demanding, 'How do I know these scores aren't fake?'"

The odds of getting a perfect score on the ACT are pretty slim.   The ACT said less than one tenth of one percent of students that take the test will get a perfect 36.

"It is pretty remarkable. Eighth graders don't normally take the ACT," said Stephen Covert, Julia's principal.

He believes her Pine View education has helped her out.

"When you take incredible students and pair them with incredible teachers, along with the support of parents, we have anything is possible," he said.

While she is still in shock, Julia continues to move forward, exceeding expectations and surprising everyone along the way.  She hopes her perfect score will help her get into MIT.  But she will settle for any Ivy League College.

She plans on becoming a biomedical engineer.

"It's good to always be internally driven. It's good to want to learn things and keep moving," she added.