With more than 2,000 participants in the six-day WSC championship, the young scholars reaped the friendship by working together and discovered themselves in laughter and tears.
NACIS secondary students have recently returned from competing in World Scholar’s Cup (WSC) Tournament of Champions at the prestigious Yale University. During this time, the focus of the event was to compete with students from various countries all over the world using a common language and become more entwined in an international world.
This was the first time that NACIS students had qualified for the final round of WSC. Three teams managed to qualify for this illustrious event. The competition as always comprised of 4 different events: team debate; collaborative writing; Scholar’s Challenge and Scholar’s Bowl. These events focus on 6 subject areas: history, science, literature, social studies, arts and a special area.
This competition breaks the traditional academic challenge, which has high requirements on students' knowledge reserve, interdisciplinary application and psychological quality. Students need to delve into a lot of resources and study unfamiliar topics. Above all, they need to be flexible in areas they have never touched before.
Everyone should focus on the cooperation between his teammates and look for opportunities to play their best.
Although the challenge was monumental, the students who competed did also succeed. They achieved 5 gold medals and 8 silver medals as well as 2 Da Vinci awards. Lillian from G9 performed very well with 3 gold medals for school’s top scholar; literature and debate as well as 1 silver medal in team collaborative writing. Our students also achieved outstanding results in writing and debate, with 5 medals and 2 medals respectively.
The 6-day-trip to Yale was such a rewarding experience, not just academically, for the students with a variety of activities and time to work with fellow WSC competitors from around the world. Walking on the campus we were able to listen to Yale undergraduates’ sharing their experiences and think our university life in the future.
Not only at Yale but also on a day trip to Harvard and MIT students got to speak to undergraduates; were given tours of the campuses and generally got a feel for what it takes to become a student at one of the world’s top universities.
All the students we met from the universities demonstrated their passion to learn and showed a keen commitment to their interests. The common theme was that passion, drive and going the extra mile is what it takes to be a student of these institutes, which inspires us a lot. Academic performance alone is not enough.
Be Ambitious
To be a world scholar, one has to look at problems from a different perspective and solve them in a different way.
This WSC experience enables our students to realize the world is so big and there are more potential to explore and more opportunities to create. A bigger stage is waiting for them. Above all, be ambitious.
Yale, see you next time！