Each year, over a million students across the nation take Advanced Placement (AP) exams, and a small percentage earn a score of 5, the highest score possible. An even smaller number earn all 100/100 points possible.

Rachel Hammett, a senior at Sherman High School, is a part of that select group.

“I was pretty shocked,” she said. “This isn’t multiple choice, and it’s judged individually with a rubric. I thought this was even more impossible.”

AP exams are scored 1-5, and scores of 3 and higher can earn college credit. According to figures published by the College Board, Hammett is one of the 338 perfect scorers out of 49,000 students who took the 2D Art and Design Portfolio exam in the spring of 2023. That means only 0.7% earned perfect scores.

“I have had students score 5s but I have never received recognition of a student scoring a perfect score and being one of 338 students in the world,” said Sherry Young, Hammett’s AP art teacher. “It is very exceptional.”

Hammett had to submit 20 pieces of artwork demonstrating a chosen inquiry, and she detailed the creation process in sketchbooks. For her inquiry, Hammett illustrated experiences that invoked childhood nostalgia.

“My three other sisters have all moved off to college, and I thought about how my childhood was coming to an end,” she said. “I wanted to reminisce about all the happy times I had as a child with all of my sisters.”

With a little help from her mother and some looking around the house, Hammett drew on memories of past birthdays celebrated with pancakes and of board games played with her family.

“I would just see what around the house would remind me of good memories, like the special plates used for birthdays,” Hammett said.

In her creation process, Hammett melded the traditional with the new age. She started her outlines digitally on an iPad and fleshed out the artwork before printing a grid to draw more accurately. From there, she used  paint, pen and paper.

“That process is consistent in all my work,” Hammett said before adding with a laugh, “It can drive Ms. Young crazy because she’s a pen-and-paper person.”

To top off her perfect score, Hammett also earned 5s on the four other AP exams she took last school year, earning her the AP Scholar with Distinction award. This year, Hammett is taking AP courses in 3D Art and Design Portfolio as well as English, Environmental Sciences and BC Calculus.