Eli Paul, valedictorian of the Wayne Hills Class of 2019, has earned a perfect score on the AP Physics II Exam he took last May. Out of 25,741 test-takers, only Paul and one other student achieved this.

Although the exam was taken in May 2018, Paul was not made aware of his impressive accomplishment until this March, when he received a letter from the College Board telling him that his “performance on the AP Physics 2 Exam in May 2018 was so superior that it falls into a very select category.” The letter, sent by The College Board’s Senior Vice President of AP and Instruction, goes on to detail Paul’s accomplishments and to congratulate him.

Paul described hearing the news as “just surreal,” saying that “the magnitude of 1/2 doesn’t really sink in.” He is humble about his accomplishment, remarking that his score was “a good portion luck” and estimating that as many as fifty other test-takers might have been a point or two shy of perfection.

Paul is no stranger to excellence in physics; last year he earned the number-two spot for AP Physics 2 in the New Jersey Science League and placed in the top five percent of competitors in the 2018 US Physics Olympiad. He was also a member of the Hills team that took second place at the 2018 American Computer Science League All-Star Contest in the Senior 3-Person Division.

In fall 2019, he will start at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he intends to continue studying physics.