As a seventh grader, Caleb Olumofin scored 28 on the ACT. He was pleasantly surprised.
"I was thinking I was going to get a 10 or something," the Pine Bluff native, now a high school graduate, said. "It was really thanks to the great teachers I had in elementary school and middle school that at least gave me some foundation and things that helped me out a lot on the test."
That just continued through high school, Olumofin said. He scored a perfect 36 his junior year.
"It was really through the quality education I was fortunate to receive that allowed me to get a good score," he said.
Flash forward to 2021, and Olumofin is a National Merit Scholar and salutatorian of the prestigious McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tenn.
"It meant so much. I never expected, even when I was in middle school, to be a salutatorian," Olumofin said. "It made me really grateful for the work my family put into me. My friends, they encouraged me, especially my friends and teachers this year."
Olumofin achieved a 4.25 GPA -- out of a possible 4.3 at McCallie -- despite taking classes virtually.
"It was only through the help of my classmates who were on campus and my teachers who were on campus who helped me be engaged and made the virtual experience in the classroom feel like I was there," he said.
He was awarded his $2,500 National Merit Scholarship a few weeks ago, selected from a pool of 50,000 semifinalists nationally who initially qualify by surpassing a benchmark score on the Preparatory SAT. About 7,600 students are named National Merit Scholars.
Colette Ficklin, Olumofin's mother, remembers a 7- or 8-year-old Caleb watching President Barack Obama's State of the Union address and wanting to tell the president how to improve education in America.
"I told him, let's start with our then-Congressman [Mike Ross]," she said. "He went to his room, yelled out, 'Mom! How do you spell scholarship?' And came back in five minutes with two well-written paragraphs."
Dr. Olabode Olumofin, a Columbia University-educated internal medicine specialist who is Caleb's father and an immigrant from Nigeria, said Caleb takes after his own father.
"He absorbs information incredibly fast from a very early age." Olabode Olumofin said. "You can't find a more thoughtful son who is also very considerate of younger siblings."
Caleb Olumofin was a gifted and talented education student at White Hall Middle School when he first took the test as part of a Duke University talent search. He was invited to an awards program in Little Rock when a recruiter from McCallie told him about a summer program.
When he came home from the two-week camp, he told his parents he wanted to enroll.
The relationships he formed and the experiences -- like taking part in Young Democrats, volunteering in Amnesty International and participating in theater and rock climbing -- helped shape Caleb Olumofin's time in Chattanooga.
"Those experiences made me a more informed person on politics, but it also helped me develop some values on what I wanted to do after college and beyond," he said. "Also, it's great to live with teachers. I feel like the dorm dynamic made the classroom dynamic even better because you felt like you had a good relationship with teachers. You were never afraid to go to a teacher to talk or ask for help and just go out to eat sometimes."
But there's more to it.
As a junior, Caleb Olumofin took part in a two-week alternative curriculum called T-Term, which allows McCallie students to get out of the classroom and into the community, he said.
"My T-Term was on the American criminal justice system," he said. "In the class, we explored these effects of the prison system on Black, Brown, and poor people. At the end of the two weeks, we were able to tour two prisons and speak with some of the individuals imprisoned there. Their stories taught me the importance valuing rehabilitative justice over punitive measures and showed me humanity's infinite potential for redemption. Similarly, I learned more about the effects racism and classism have on our current justice system, for example cash bail, unpaid labor, aggressive three-strike laws, felon disenfranchisement, etc."
Taking contemporary literature and literature of gender studies, where he studied Black writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Angela Davis and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., also heavily influenced Caleb Olumofin.
"I was challenged to critically examine social interactions and norms through an intersectional feminist lens," he said. "Those readings have informed much of the way I see the world."
Elected and civic leaders from Pine Bluff value Olumofin for his volunteerism in the community.
Jimmy Cunningham, executive director of the Delta Rhythm and Bayous Alliance, said Caleb Olumofin is "beyond his years, needless to say." Cunningham spoke of a project where the goal for Regional Park is to develop an interpretive site that chronicles the history of a contraband camp and plantation.
"Caleb has gone and done extensive research to provide recommendations on how to use those examples," Cunningham said. "He found visuals in other places. He also had insights on the bigger picture and how everything fits in. He's an integral participant, a committed task force member."
State Rep. Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, said she met Caleb Olumofin at a bill signing at the state Capitol.
He took part in an internship under Flowers and worked on an assembly that she called a response to George Floyd's death.
"He's been a part of planning and ideas and following through," Flowers said. "I'm impressed by him as a leader. His love for Pine Bluff is superlative. He is incredible. He is conscientious about who he is as a Black man.
Caleb Olumofin's interest in public policy, political science and economics is one reason why he plans to attend the University of Chicago.
Those are just his options for a double major. Caleb Olumofin has chosen applied mathematics for his first major, but Chicago's quarter system, instead of semesters, allows him to take more classes to determine the other, he said.
"The amount of research they have toward education and policy, I'm interested in trying to increase educational equity," Olumofin said. "Had I not gone to McCallie, there would have been so many things I would have missed out on, and I'm not more deserving of an education than anyone else."
Flowers hopes Caleb Olumofin's contributions to Pine Bluff don't end in Chicago.
"I hope and pray he returns to Pine Bluff with all he has to offer and make the city great," she said.
CORRECTION: Caleb Olumofin is a National Merit Scholar and salutatorian of the McCallie School in 2021. A previous version of this story misstated the year.