{"id":29693,"date":"2021-07-22T23:35:17","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T03:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=29693"},"modified":"2021-07-22T23:57:10","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T03:57:10","slug":"williams-student-earns-perfect-score-on-waterloo-chemistry-exam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/williams-student-earns-perfect-score-on-waterloo-chemistry-exam\/","title":{"rendered":"Williams student earns perfect score on Waterloo chemistry exam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As an aspiring medical student, Brian Park knows he needs to make the grade on chemistry and biology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a goal he has kept in mind as an International Baccalaureate student at Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School and it is knowledge he recently put into action with the University of Waterloo\u2019s prestigious Avogadro Exam. Attracting chemistry students from over 270 secondary schools, the average score for the exam is just under 60 per cent \u2013 but Park, a Grade 11 student, scored a perfect 100, an achievement made by less than a handful of the more than 3,000 participating students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had a good feeling about the contest as chemistry was always something that interested me and a discipline I pursued out of school, but I never thought I would have come in first place since it is a contest taken by many students throughout Canada and the world,\u201d said Brian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian was first introduced to the exam by Karen Almeida, his IB Chemistry teacher, who encouraged all of her students to take the exam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following his perfect score, she said Brian\u2019s achievement was about much more than simple memorization of formulae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe puts forth meticulous effort into everything he does and he made time, in addition to his regular classwork, to prepare for the contest,\u201d she said. \u201cA perfect score on this contest doesn\u2019t come from memorizing facts or formulas, it comes from years of learning, understanding and practicing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian discovered his passion for the sciences almost as soon as he entered high school and quickly gravitated towards chemistry and how he could apply what he \u201clearned within the classroom to the outside world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis experience has given me an opportunity to see where my chemistry level was at and see whether it should be something I would be interested in pursuing,\u201d he said. \u201cI found it just reinforced it, not just because I did well, but while doing the contest I realized the reason most of the questions came very easy to me and that is because I had studied a lot of chemistry outside of school on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With one more year left of his IB program, Brian still has some time to think about what he wants to pursue in his post-secondary career. At the moment, he\u2019s interested in pursuing a career in bio-chemistry before tackling medical school with the ultimate goal of becoming a medical doctor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just want to tell all students who may be reading this story to not be afraid to pursue whatever they may be passionate about,\u201d he said. \u201cMake use of all the opportunities you are provided with.  I initially took the Avogadro contest because it was simply a subject I liked, however, it fortunately led to this great achievement which I am extremely proud of.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waterloo\u2019s Avogadro Exam is held for Grade 11 students taking their first high school chemistry course. Areas of study include structure of matter, bonding, reactions, solutions and gases. According to the University, it is designed to include \u201cprobing and demanding questions on some of the main topics of high school chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an aspiring medical student, Brian Park knows he needs to make the grade on chemistry and biology. It\u2019s a goal he has kept in mind as an International Baccalaureate student at Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School and it is knowledge he recently put into action with the University of Waterloo\u2019s prestigious Avogadro Exam. Attracting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/2021-07-22-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7IV","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 01:08:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}