Students from all around the country are getting ready for the expeditions of college life ranging from volunteer hours, jobs and test scores. The American College Test is a big factor to getting scholarships. Junior Braden Garrison represents the school with the perfect ACT score: a 36.

Garrison was ecstatic of the news he received and feels satisfied of his now perfect score. Even though he previously had made a 35.

“I was actually in Cullman that family Christmas, so I was pretty excited because the year before, I scored a 35,” Garrison said. “This time scoring a 36 I was really excited. It was the thing that I needed to—hopefully—get scholarships at the school I’m looking at.”

Garrison is a baseball player. Earlier in the school year, he managed to make time for studying within the mix of baseball and school.

“In the fall it’s easy because all we do is work out so we’re usually done early; but in the spring and the end of winter we actually start practicing. So I try to go home—and even if we practice at seven o’clock—I make sure that I stay up and get on my studying,” Garrison said.

The junior encourages first-timers to execute the ACT for a sensible understanding of the test. As for the one who strives to improve their score, he encourages to look at each section.

“I would say for the people who haven’t taken it yet to just to take it the first time and see what its like,” Garrison said. “For the people who have taken it or just trying to get their score up, know what you have to look for in each section: English—you don’t even to read it all, it’s just grammar and [for] science you don’t have to read all the material you just have to look at the graphs.”

Garrison’s dream schools are Duke and Vanderbilt and he plans on majoring in biomedical engineering. He hopes this score will allow him to obtain a full scholarship to these schools.

“Most of [Duke and Vanderbilt’s] scholarship money is just needs based and they have a bunch of people scoring 34’s and 35’s that apply. They only give merit money for academic money to the top one percent. Hopefully [the test] will put me in the top one percent,” said Garrison.