Aqib Zakaria, a member of the Class of 2020, earned the highest possible composite score of 36 on the ACT® test he took in April of 2019. Zakaria, who attended Haynes Academy and Metairie Academy for Advanced Studies before moving to Jesuit, is the son of Adila and Feroz Zakaria. He is the fifth member of the Class of 2020 to report a confirmed score of 36 on the ACT. Classmates Tom Levy, Dominic Stoner, William Wells, and Milan Mardia were recognized for the accomplishment within the last year and a half.

At Jesuit, Zakaria is the co-captain of the debate and academic games teams. As captain, he helps lead two highly respected programs and hopes to improve on last year’s successes. Zakaria won the Lincoln-Douglas division at last year’s Benjamin Franklin Speech & Debate Invitational. At Jesuit
Awards Night, he was honored with The John D. Schilleci Memorial Award for elocution in the senior division and The Giunio Socola Memorial Award for excellence in debate in the Lincoln-Douglas senior division. Zakaria and classmate Milan Mardia were key players on last year’s academic games team that made a fantastic run to a 2nd
place finish at nationals in Orlando.

Zakaria serves as president of the Model UN club, where was chosen as Best Delegate in the Tulane UN Conference last November. He is the founder and
president of the newly formed Philosophy Club, vice president for Mu Alpha Theta, and a member of the National Honor Society. He placed 3rd at the Mu Alpha Theta state convention in the Hustle team division, and he is also a National Merit Semifinalist. 

Zakaria’s Jesuit resume speaks for itself, but the man behind the resume continues to expand his horizons and explore the growing world around him, which may be a skill he developed as a member of the Outdoors Club, yet another part of his involvement at Jesuit. After school he works a part-time job at Shields|Mott L.L.P., a progressive law firm designed to handle sophisticated business transactions. He applied and was accepted to attend the YMCA Conference on National Affairs (CONA), selected as one of the 25 Louisiana students who will prepare and present a proposal of national or international importance. These are Zakaria’s passions—political science and foreign affairs—which will likely be his concentrated areas of study at one of the nation’s top universities. 

Certainly, his score on the ACT will not be the last time that Jesuit High School is congratulating Aqib Zakaria. 

The ACT consists of tests in English, mathematics, reading and science, each scored on a scale of 1–36. A student’s composite score is the average of the four test scores.

On average, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of students who take the ACT earn a top score. In the U.S. high school graduating class of 2018, only 3,741 out of nearly 1.9 million graduates who took the ACT earned a composite score of 36.