Edgewood grad gets perfect AP exam score
When John F. Kennedy High School graduate Francisco Ortiz reflects on his junior year, he remembers a difficult transition.
He had moved from the industrial metropolis of Monterrey, Mexico, to San Antonio, and everything was new, from the classes to the culture.
But it didn’t take too long to get the hang of things. Last week, Ortiz, 18, was notified that he received a rare perfect score on the Advanced Placement Spanish Language and Culture Exam, which he took in the spring of 2022.
He is one of 247 students worldwide to receive the maximum score on all five portions of the test, according to the Edgewood Independent School District. The AP exam includes a multiple-choice section, an essay portion and a presentation that requires students to examine a cultural feature of a Spanish-speaking community.
A member of the Spanish Honor Society and Kennedy’s soccer team, Ortiz graduated in the top 10 percent of his class in June and now attends Palo Alto College, with plans to transfer to the University of Texas at San Antonio in two years.
Principal Francisco Ramirez congratulated him for being “one of the best in the world” for his score and added, “Francisco is a global gamechanger.”
Ortiz said he struggled in some of his classes when he first moved here, especially English, but he leveraged studying skills he learned at the schools he attended back home.
“Going to school in Mexico is very difficult,” he said. “You have to be 100 percent focused on the homework and exams and if you miss even a single class you have to do so much work to make it up.”
AP Spanish Language and Culture, however, came easy, both because of his upbringing and the instruction of his teacher, Blanca Esquivel. The most valuable part of the class was learning to write academic essays and professional emails, Ortiz said.
A kinesiology major, he hopes to one day return to Mexico to work as an athletic trainer.
Ortiz is not the only San Antonio student to ace the 2022 AP assessments. Reagan High School senior Ania Valdez also scored a perfect five on the Advanced Placement 3-D Art and Design Exam.