Student of the Month: Cedar Rapids Prairie High School Junior gets perfect ACT score

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - The final KCRG-TV9 Student of the Month for this school year is Elliott Bourgeous.

He’s a junior at Prairie High School in Cedar Rapids. From music groups, to academic decathlon, Business Professionals of America, to being on the Mayor’s youth council, Bourgeous stays busy.

“I really like the marching band community, I think it’s really fun,” he said “Especially the drum like, it’s kind of a tight-knit group.”

He placed second at BPA nationals in Texas in economic research. That’s all in addition to volunteering with his church youth group, and being on the Fairfax Baseball League since he was seven years old.

“I just like hanging out with my friends, and it’s just fun really,” Bourgeous said.

His gifted and talented teacher Erin Hoffman taught him in third grade, now and in high school too. “It’s been kind of fun to watch him grow,” she said.

Elliott has a busy course load at school, and has a 4.19 GPA. One of his biggest accomplishments came when he took the ACT. Last year, he got a 33, an impressive score. He thought he could improve on the English portion, so focused on studying that for the next time.

When he took the test, he wasn’t sure how it really went. “I walked out of there, I wasn’t very confident, I don’t think. I was also kind of sick that day, so I was not feeling great.” He still had hope though.

It turned out, all his studying worked. He got a 36, a perfect score. His teacher remembers finding out.

“We were at academic decathlon practice, it was just kind of casually mentioned and I was like, wait what I was taken aback for a moment,” said Hoffman.

What motivates him though is simple. Just the feeling of getting work done.

“Just kind of a sense of accomplishment,” Bourgeous said. “I think the biggest thing is if I finish something I feel proud of it.”

“He’s capable of so many things,” said Hoffman.

Copyright 2022 KCRG. All rights reserved.