Bellaire HS grads Yuqing “Mike” Xiong, left, and Jinchen Zou

Two Bellaire HS graduates just learned that they made perfect scores on last May’s Advanced Placement (AP) macroeconomics exam. Yuqing “Mike” Xiong and Jinchen Zou graduated from Bellaire last spring and took the exam to earn college credit and be eligible for higher-level courses as university freshmen after completing Michael Clark’s economics course.

Jinchen and Yuqing’s are two of only 51 students worldwide to have made a perfect score on the exam in 2014, which was taken by 117,209 students last year. Jinchen now attends Yale University and Yuqing is going to the University of Texas.

Clark is one of Bellaire HS’s lead teachers for AP macroeconomics and is a valuable resource to his students. The AP Macroeconomics course provides students with a thorough understanding of the principles of economics and how those principles are applied on a global scale.

“For me, it makes me proud to have been their teacher, because it is a testament to their hard work,” said Clark. “They both worked many hours outside of class with me to understand every possible topic. It also makes me proud of my whole faculty, because a perfect score on the economics exam happens not just because of what went on in my class, but because of the skills they were taught in other social studies classes, their math classes, their English classes, and other classes.”