Maggie Dowling and Bethany Burns share the same birthday: July 21, 1998.
The two Signal Mountain High School seniors didn't meet until six years later in first grade at Thrasher Elementary School, but since then their academic and extracurricular careers have practically been mirror images for 12 years.
Now the two seniors share another number: 4.0 GPA.
What are the odds that two girls born on the same day would meet and 17 years later end up as valedictorian and salutatorian of the same high school graduating class?
It's 0.274 percent.
Maggie is the daughter of Beth and Brian Dowling. Her father, an actuary at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, did the number crunching. The numbers go even deeper than that with a probability factor of "essentially 1 in 365.25," he says after doing the math.
Bethany and Maggie are two of eight seniors with 4.0 grade-point averages in their graduating class of 158 students at Signal Mountain, according to Dr. Sherry Dagnan, junior-senior class guidance counselor. In case of such a tie, the valedictorian-salutatorian honors are determined on a numeric grade-point average, she says.
Bethany, with the highest numeric average, is the class valedictorian, and Maggie the salutatorian.
"There has been a group of about five people since ninth grade that knew we were in the running for the top spots," says Bethany, daughter of Haven and Kirk Burns. "In the middle of our junior year, Maggie and I began to realize it was us."
Maggie says that didn't make the BFFs more competitive with each other, "but more excited. We knew we had to keep going and working hard to make sure it happened.
"It's really an honor. It makes it even better that I'll be up there with her. I feel like I won't be as nervous with her right behind me," says Maggie.
In addition to their shared birth date, the similarities between the two friends are too obvious to ignore.
- Both played on the Signal Mountain High School girls golf team and were members of the 2012 and 2014 state championship teams.
- Both played in the school band. Bethany played French horn from sixth to 10th grade; Maggie still plays clarinet in the band.
- Both were elected to the 2015 homecoming court.
- Both participated in the Signal Mountain Distinguished Young Woman Program during their junior year, which Bethany won.
- Both were in the school honors program during ninth and 10th grades.
- Both were in the International Baccalaureate Diploma program in their junior and senior years.
- Both were members and held offices in the Technology Student Association.
- Both were elected to Youth in Government offices.
Bethany laughs as she recalls how she set her sights on becoming valedictorian in second grade, the night she and her mom watched the Reese Witherspoon comedy "Legally Blonde." In the film, Witherspoon's character, Elle Woods, addresses her Harvard Law School graduating class.
"I asked my mother 'How do I get to give a speech like that?' She said 'Be the valedictorian,'" she recalls. "Now, to have one of my best friends onstage with me just makes it so much better."
It seems the only thing these two don't share is a college selection. Bethany will play golf for Dartmouth College in New Hampshire next year. Maggie is headed to Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, having received an Alumni Scholarship from the Chattanooga chapter of Georgia Tech alumni.
Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.