From ‘Perfect’ to No. 1 Valedictorian, future brain surgeon, aced ACT as a junior

BY SCOTT AKANEWICH STAFF WRITER

One of the most stressful moments of any high school senior’s final year of secondary education – one that has aspirations of landing at his or her dream university – is the ACT.

After all, the vaunted college entrance exam and the score one earns can go a long way to booking passage to a big-name school, regardless of a high grade point average.

Dhanush Kondapalli had no such concerns, though.

As a junior, he had already achieved a perfect score of 36 on the pressurized gauntlet of English, mathematics, reading and science and as a result didn’t have to put himself through the process again after having planned to use his first attempt as merely a practice run.

With that out of the way early, Kondapalli was free to concentrate solely on his grades over the course of his senior year and achieved the rank of valedictorian of Liberty Hill’s Class of 2023.

According to Kondapalli, he never set out to reach the top of the academic mountain – he simply wanted to get as close to the summit as possible.

“At the beginning, it wasn’t really something I had in mind – I was just going to do the best I could,” said Kondapalli. “For me, it wasn’t the standing that mattered, whether I was second, third or fourth.”

Perhaps it was that calm, cool, collected approach that allowed him to reach the peak or maybe it was the serene influence of one of his favorite pursuits – that of chasing a little, white ball around a tract of wilderness.

“Without golf, I think what I’ve accomplished would’ve been impossible,” he said. “It’s always been important for me to have a social life and golf has always been an escape for me to get my mind off everything else to help my mental health, which is very important.”

Kondapalli will attend the University of Texas in the fall, which will be only the beginning of the long, arduous road of becoming a doctor.

But, not just any garden-variety physician.

Kondapalli aims to be a neurosurgeon with the hopes of helping conquer man’s final frontier of the human anatomy, he said.

“There’s still a lot we don’t know about the brain,” said Kondapalli. “I feel like we can help a lot of people the more we learn.”

New kid

Kondapalli and his family moved to Liberty Hill his sophomore year from Ronald Reagan High School in San Antonio. He said he wasn’t too thrilled initially with his new surroundings – which coincided with the global pandemic.

“I wasn’t too happy at the time,” he said. “I knew if I moved here, I would be online for an entire year because my parents wanted to be safe. But, now I realize coming here was a great decision.”

Still, when he finally stepped on Liberty Hill’s campus for the first time to attend classes in person a year later as a junior, it was like starting at a new school all over again, he said.

“I really didn’t know any people and knew I was going to have to make friends,” said Kondapalli. “But, thanks to my parents (mother Radhika and father Kayvee) for keeping me on track for the whole year I was at home.”

Life as a Longhorn

Despite the fact many of his peers had long since decided which college to attend, Kondapalli took his time from a list that included Rice and St. Louis University before settling on Texas. He said it was never his goal to go to a more well-known medical school such as Stanford or Johns Hopkins.

“Prestige doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “UT is close to home and I have a lot of friends going there.”

Kondapalli played on the Panthers’ golf team for the past two years and said the game will continue to play a large role as he matriculates forward and beyond.

“Golf is always going to be a huge part of my life,” he said. “The workload is going to be more than ever in college, but maybe I’ll even try to play com-