City students get perfect marks in 2016 IB exams
Seven pupils from English Schools Foundation schools managed to get the top mark of 45.
[First published on 08 July, 2016] For a student who has achieved all A*’s in his GCSE’s, getting a perfect score on the International Baccalaureate Diploma is the next step – but it comes at a price.
“That perfectionism broke me because it made me obsessed with being perfect. I felt a lot of pressure because I feel like a lot of people expected me to get perfect scores,” Garrick Wan, a student from South Island School said.
He describes having suffered through continuous years of neck pain, a physical manifestation of the stress that comes with studying. His hard work has paid off, however, as he will be attending the London School of Economics next year to study Actuarial Science.
Wan is one of seven students from the English Schools Foundation schools to achieve perfect scores – 45 points – on the 2016 International Baccalaureate Diploma examination.
Another student from West Island School to achieve the perfect score, Howard Yoo Hyun Chae, found that his careful planning helped him avoid the extreme stress that usually surrounds the examination time.
“I had developed a routine beforehand which helped me cope with the stress,” he said, describing his day, where he has two to three hours of leisure time after school before studying again. “My parents never pressured me, but there is a collective mindset to get that perfect score. I felt that pressure from my peers,” he added.
