A focus on excellence and a lot of hard work has seen two Avondale College students top the world in their Cambridge exams!
Justin Yang (Year 11) came first in the world in the IGCSE English exam, with a raw mark of 99%; and Seivin Kim topped the world in the IGCSE Mathematics exam, gaining 100% - while only in Year 10!
It's an astonishing achievement, given that students from 140 countries and more than 4500 schools around the world take the Cambridge International qualification. Each year there are over 700,000 subject entries for Cambridge IGCSE exams alone. Factor in the additional challenges posed by Auckland's extended lockdown last year, and it becomes obvious that these are two very remarkable students indeed.
Seivin, who was also named as Avondale College's Junior Dux for 2021, says she had done a lot of revision of past papers in the lead up to the two Mathematics exams, and she came out of the exam rooms feeling quietly confident.
"There weren't any questions that I felt I had definitely got wrong," she says.
However, she was still surprised to get the news that she had gained all possible 200 marks, along with the Top in the World result.
Justin also came out of his two English exams feeling pleased with the way they had gone, but certainly didn't expect he had done well enough to take out the top position.
"It felt quite surreal when I heard the news," he says.
Justin puts his success down to lots of hard work and revision, and says he has been inspired by Aristotle's famous quotation about excellence: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
It's a habit that both students look forward to developing further in their studies this year. We wish them well!
