Neah-Kah-Nie student earns perfect SAT score
For every 10,000 students who take the SAT, only seven will earn the coveted perfect score of 1600. That’s less than half a percentage of all test takers.
And Neah-Kah-Nie High School senior (‘26) Dillon Gardner is one of them.
“I was pretty shocked, I didn’t believe it at first,” Dillon said. “It was a quiet day in April and I opened up my computer to check on it and I see ‘1600.’ I was shocked and spent a minute or two just surprised because I didn’t expect to get a perfect score. But, it turned out to be real.”
Comically, Dillon (and his father Jared Gardner) joke that it was the mocha his mother [Hilary Foote] gave him on the morning of the test that made all the difference. But, Dillon detailed that taking the test twice probably played the most to his advantage.
“A few weeks prior I took the SAT a first time and got a score of 1480,” he said. “I decided to take another test because the second math section surprised me with its difficulty. I didn’t get the opportunity to answer half of the questions. So, I went back and took a different approach to solve those problems and thought I could do better, and I did.”
While a perfect score is a momentous achievement, prepping for the test was not even remotely Dillon’s main focus during his high school years. During his time as a Pirate, he’s been involved with the robotics team, speech and debate, and is a member of the Dungeons and Dragons club.
“The teachers and the tightness of the community are the main things I love about being here at Neah-Kah-Nie,” said Dillon. “Even though it’s very small, I get to know and see other students in multiple classes a day. But, it’s especially the teachers who put in the effort way beyond what they’re compensated for.”
“The Argonauts,” Neah-Kah-Nie’s robotics team, made it to the state competition for the first time since the COVID pandemic. The team placed sixth out of 24 teams.
“I’ve received quite a bit of mentoring from the volunteer programming assistant and I’m hoping to give back as much as I can,” Dillon said about returning to the team during his senior year.
In addition to taking AP level classes at Neah-Kah-Nie, Dillon is also virtually enrolled at Tillamook Bay Community College through which he hopes to finish his Associate’s in Computer Science by the end of his senior year.
“It’s taken some dedication to make it happen, but I’m working with my schedule and course load to get the degree done,” he said. “With a system integrated into the high school, it has been an awesome way to foster more learning with more advanced concepts through the college.”
While school is out for a few months, Dillion isn’t putting his education on pause for the summer. He received a full scholarship (tuition, room and board) to attend Carnegie Mellon’s National High School Game Academy. The rigorous, six week program allows students to explore and make actual computer games. By the end, students will have been assigned to two different teams and participated in building two different games.
“I’ve always loved working with games, looking at games, playing games, and, most especially, making games,” Dillon said. “So I thought, ‘Why don’t I get some practical experience?’ I’m super excited for it as it will be a learning-focused environment that preps me for college as it’s on a real college campus with college professors.”
Dillon believes that his passion for games is what made his application stand out to Carnegie Mellon.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re coming in with a bunch of skills,” he said. “I think they’re looking for passion in their applicants, an excitement to learn, and a willingness to put in the hard work needed.”
In his application essay, he described why “Outer Wild” was one of his favorite games.
“It’s a space game about exploring planets, but you’re stuck in a time loop every 22 minutes where the sun explodes and you’re sent back to the beginning,” Dillion said. “You explore runes of this ancient alien civilization and uncover why the sun’s exploding. The storytelling being done through the environments I thought was a pretty intriguing and a captivating experience.”
Dillon said he hopes to bring what he learns at Carnegie Mellon’s National High School Game Academy program back to his robotics team at Neah-Kah-Nie.
“I come from the Oregon Coast, which doesn’t have as many resources as one would expect from a big city. For a kid from here to go and take back information to their community, that’s what I believe [the program] is looking for and that’s something I’m absolutely planning on doing. I’m going to learn more about computer programming and apply that to robotics and try to teach my teammates whatever I can.”
Dillon has also been accepted to a year-long program in Algorithmic and Combinatorial Thinking hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. The program focuses on the math and science of computers. Dillon will be virtually attending the program.
“It will be graduate level mathematics for computer science. We’ll be talking about the mathematics behind how functions work and how to calculate the efficiency of various pieces of code. I really like computers, so I’m excited to take that and learn a little bit more about the math to combine with my practical experience,” he said.
Dillon said that his parents, through Google searches and knowledge of existing programs, were able to suggest these computer science programs because they thought they would be good fits for him.
“My parents are probably my biggest help,” Dillon said. “They’ve been really helpful in providing these opportunities.”
“We are pretty excited and proud,” said Jared. “Dillon is also very aware and appreciative of the resources that Neah-Kah-Nie has provided both in extracurriculars [at school and in the County] and also the collaboration with TBCC for expanded opportunities created by legislature a few years back. The recent levy* success hits home as so much of what has benefited our kids could have been threatened and Dillon recognizes how impactful it will be on other kids behind him.”
Dillon’s family owns and operates Nehalem River Ranch: a multi-species, pasture-based farm committed to the highest standards of animal welfare and land stewardship. And one might not necessarily expect a budding computer scientist to say he doesn’t have any memories of not growing up around cows.
“We practice a very anachronistic way of farming that is about soil, it’s not about tech,” Jared said. “There’s a big movement in farming to go high-tech with GPS driven tractors and the sorts. I intentionally have gone the other way. It’s a very simple, holistic life. It’s all about soil, plants, and animal health…But for us, it matters more that Dillon isn’t dragged into what I chose to do as an adult…What are you interested in? It’s going to meander as it should.”
As a young kid, Dillon remembers expressing an interest in computers; his parents presented him with a Raspberry Pi: a small computer.
“In this day and age, it’s pretty easy to access tech stuff, even on a ranch,” Dillon laughed. “We have power and that’s what you need to run a computer. I would just plug the [Raspberry Pi] into a monitor and keyboard and boot it up. I would practice installing various programs on it.”
Not only have Dillon’s parents sought out tools and opportunities of interest for him, they have also helped navigate the struggles Dillon faced in traditional school.
When he was in fourth grade, in-person school was not working out well.
“I was not really the most social of my peers back then,” Dillon said. “I didn’t get along with the other kids in elementary school. So, I decided to ask my parents to go to school online. I think that’s where my academics developed. I had resources and access to some challenging classes that helped foster my development. But, I also had some problems from online school that have plagued me, like a lot of procrastination.”
Jared relayed that at one point he received a call from the vice principal of the school saying that Dillon would need to be held back because he was getting D’s in his classes.
“The reality was, when we actually dug through the gradebook, he was not complying, wasn’t showing up to online classes, and wasn’t turning in assignments. But, he was getting good scores on tests.”
The decision was made for Dillon to return to in-person school during his freshman year.
“Something clicked in him, and now he’s engaged and has accelerated,” Jared said.
Neah-Kah-Nie Principal Christy Hartford agrees.
“We are so proud of Dillon and all that he has accomplished this year.”
With his sights set on his summer programs, life after high school isn’t far from his mind. He hopes his experiences will aide in his ambition of studying computer science and game design at a big college.
“I don’t have a perfect 4.0, there’s a few times where I didn’t get the best grades, so I need to bolster that with some other sources that firm up my portfolio to compensate for the error.”
His perfect SAT score is a good start to getting him into the college of his choice. And arguably the most appealing thing on Dillon’s resume is not perfection, but his ambition to be a life-long learner.
“The important thing for learning is being able to sink into it, be passionate, and determined.”
*Neah-Kah-Nie School District levy Measure 29-184 was approved by voters on the special May 2025 ballot. The levy is estimated to raise $2 million for Neah-Kah-Nie schools.
