Thomas Westbrook of Bishop Seabury Academy is the Journal-World's 2014 Academic All Star Champion.

In a field full of high achievers with straight A’s on their transcripts and long lists of academic and civic accomplishments, it takes something special to stand out as the all-around academic all star of the year. And Thomas Westbrook of Bishop Seabury Academy did just that.

Besides a final GPA well over 4.0, Westbrook is a National Merit Finalist who achieved near-perfect scores on his SAT exams – 800 math; 800 reading; 770 in writing skills.

While doing that, he amassed an impressive list of other honors, receiving the Yale Book Award and being named a Kansas Honor Scholar, a Seabury Scholar, an AP Scholar with Distinction and a Presidential Scholar Nominee. He was also accepted to the Telluride Association Summer Program and the Dole Center Youth Civic Leadership Institute.

In addition to his academic pursuits, Westbrook served as editor in chief of the school newspaper and yearbook, prefect in student government and captain of the tennis and cross country teams. He participated in forensics and theater.

Asked to identify his most unusual or interesting characteristic, Westbrook said it’s his ability to feel empathy with other people, something he distinguishes from sympathy.

“Many people are sympathetic towards others,” he said. “It’s much less common to be empathetic. This isn’t to say that I’m an extraordinarily good person or anything like that. I’m not that immodest. I attribute my empathy to having done a lot of reading as a child. Novels are excellent for this sort of thing. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is a skill which takes a lot of practice to develop, and most people who don’t have it simply haven’t ever done the practice.”

Westbrook says the special environment at Seabury was especially helpful, describing it as “much smaller, much closer, almost familial.” But much of the real credit for his success, he said, goes to his mother.

“There are many things which have made my mother so significant in my life,” he said. “There’s always bringing me into the world, just for starters. Then there’s the way she gave up a career in law to spend time with me. If not for that, I would be nothing like the person I am today.”

“I believe firmly in the absolute necessity of the presence of parents or at least parental figures for a child’s development,” he said. “My mother’s always been supportive, always been helpful, never pried or lectured unnecessarily. I owe her everything.”

Westbrook plans to attend Harvard University next year, following in his mother’s footsteps, and major in a humanities field in preparation for law school, but also has dreams of becoming a writer.

“I might moonlight as a writer, but it’s tough to be a writer,” he said. “Probably law is where I’ll be most likely to end up.”