Every single one finished their high school career with straight A+'s in every class, all four years, but not one would say it was easy.
"It was hard. There were many nights where I wondered why I was putting myself through this," said Jericho High School Valedictorian Riya Shah.
Shah is now accepted to Princeton, one of many prestigious institutions that value the academic achievement in this elite group. They are way more than their grades though.
"We have National Merit Scholars; we have musicians at the highest level," said Jericho High School Principal Brian Cummings.
The school also has future problem solvers. Valedictorian Franklin Lee is headed to Stanford to sort out healthcare issues and transportation problems with A.I.
"The plane schedules could be a little chaotic, and like maybe I could fix that," Lee said.
Two in the group are headed to Georgetown.
"I wanna be a lawyer," Amneet Kaur said.
"I'm a global health major in their school of health," Harnoor Joneja said.
All of them have made sacrifices at some point in the busy social lives and activity schedules that most high schoolers have.
Twenty-one is a lot of valedictorians, but it has to do with the system in which they calculate the scores. The system uses the unweighted letter grades of students, meaning technically, they could have all A+'s and not taken any honors classes.
However, for most of the valedictorians, they have taken honors and AP courses.
They do have tips for those in high school and are still in the thick of it.
"You just really need to build yourself a strong support system," Kaur said.
"By getting my SAT done within sophomore year, I didn't have the same level of stress," said valedictorian Kevin Liu.
The only issue now is recognition at graduation... you can't have 21 speeches.