News

Overview of the 2020 Competition Results

June 17, 2020

At the beginning of 2020, the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 disrupted the activities and competitions the students had planned. However, during this special period, students at SHSID actively adjusted their plans and continued their passion for challenging themselves under the guidance of their instructors, online clubs and learning groups. Activities were carried out to help the students enrich their extracurricular lives and actively explore more knowledge in unknown fields. Students took the initiative to seek out resources and actively participated in major academic competitions and activities both at home and abroad, demonstrating the strength and specialty of students at SHSID. They won many awards on various platforms and achieved excellent results! In addition, many students concentrated on completing scientific research and research in related fields and achieved amazing results through their research, demonstrating their dedication to science. A 12th grader at our school participated in a robot research project and published SCI articles in the name of participating authors in the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. An 11th grader’s Research in psychology was also published in the International Journal of Contemporary Educational Research.

The 2019-2020 USAD China ended in April. SHSID’s 2 teams of 17 students from Grades 9 and 10 managed to carry home 8 bronze, 7 silver, and 10 gold medals. In the Super Quiz section, Team 204 won 2nd place. Overall, SHSID Team 204 won 1st, and Team 205 won 6th. There are several notable individual decathletes who won gold medals and silver medals, too. SHSID has been awarded the “Outstanding Achievement Award” because of its excellent performance for 5 consecutive years. Unfortunately, the US Final Round was postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19. However, SHSID students have maintained a high level of performance in the USAD over the years and have passed on the decathlete spirit to even more students.

Due to the impact of the COVID-19, some competitions that have not been canceled have been changed into online competitions. In the field of biology, 37 students participated in the British Biology Olympiad-BBO, and 33 students participated in the American Biology Olympiad-USABO. After a year of preparation, they achieved ideal results, and students from each grade of the high school won several impressive awards. Learning online continued through the beginning of the semester. The excellent performance of the students in the competition was due to the excellent daily teaching of the instructor in the Biology Club as well as the responsible club leader. Through their preparation for the competition, the students also deepened their enthusiasm for learning biology. BrainBee China contest, a biological competition that our school has participated in for five consecutive years, also recently released the results of this year’s competition. Showing our traditional strength, we won the first prize in the Brain Bee National Competition for the fourth consecutive year. The students used the online platform for their pre-competition training, maintained their enthusiasm with consistent hard work, and finally won this great honor.

Chemistry competitions are another one of SHSID’s strong suits. COVID-19 has not stopped the students from advancing in chemistry competitions and they have made great progress for three consecutive years. In the first half of 2020, in the Canadian Chemistry Contest (CCC) organized by the Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC), 25 participating students won 5 Global Outstanding Awards, 5 Gold Awards, 5 Silver Awards, and 7 Bronze Awards, with many students successfully qualified to enter the Canadian Chemistry Olympiad (CCO). The students of the Chemical Club insisted on using online activities to supervise and review each other this semester. Two students participated in the United States Chemical Olympiad USNCO-Local and USNCO-National and achieved excellent results.

The Intermediate Physics Challenge & Senior Physics Challenge, organized by the British Physics Olympiad, is an international competition for AS and GCSE level students. Excellent results have been released, with students taking home 4 gold medals, 2 silver medals, and 1 bronze medal. Another student participated in the British Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad-BAAO for the first time and won a bronze award.

In early February, the American Mathematics Competition (AMC) China round was canceled. However, this news did not stop student explorations in the world of mathematics. In such an unfavorable situation, many students still overcame obstacles, participated in the AMC, and successfully advanced to the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) with excellent results. In addition, a Dutch student of the Math Club achieved a good score in the first round of the Dutch Mathematics Olympiad with his love and hard work for mathematics and successfully advanced to the third round. This is also the first time that our school has had a student qualify for the Dutch Math Olympiad qualifiers. In the second semester of the 2019 school year, the instructors and students of the Mathematics Society worked together to find a set of online activity training models and actively sought a suitable competition platform to showcase their strengths in order to ensure that their routine preparation and planning continued during this special period. In the "Purple Comet Maths Meet," held by the famous American mathematics summer school, “Awesome Math”, a team of our students won the third prize. In the math modeling competitions, our students also achieved excellent results. In the international round of the International Math Modeling Competition (IMMC), two teams place in the top 5%, and three teams placed in the top 12%.

The instructor and students of the SHSID Linguistic Club have been engaged in online communication and training. In the second semester of the 2019 school year, the club started an online training camp in early February and operated jointly in both a BB class and on Zoom. Therefore, 2020 has become the year with the most language activities. Under the careful guidance of their instructor, the students have undergone several months of training and their understanding of language logic has risen qualitatively. They also created a public account for linguistics, linguistic knowledge, and small columns for languages of various countries to help promote language learning. A total of 18 students from our school entered the National Linguistic Olympiad, and 12 students advanced. Among the 18 students, 3 individual first prizes, 5 individual second prizes, and 5 individual third prizes were won. Six of the students were participating in the language competition for the first time, and all of these results demonstrated great improvement from last year.

During the past few months, many students have participated in online programming contests to continue advancing their love for this field. Many students participated in the USA Computing Olympiad-USACO, completed multiple rounds, and achieved results in the gold, silver and bronze levels. By participating in the second International Youth Programming Competition (ICode), students not only learned the tools of programming, but also learned programming knowledge. After many rounds of competition, many students achieved excellent results and advanced to the finals.

In April, two SHSID placed first and second in the final round of theKnowledge@WhartonHigh School (KWHS) Investment Competition for Region 1. This year, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the final round of the competition was held online. Only the top 12 teams are selected to enter the final round. Money Scooper, the champion team, consists of seven 11th grade SHSID students. They started to learn about KWHS in grade 10 and participated in the 2018-2019 KWHS competition. During the 2019-2020 KWHS competition, they worked hard together again. When the great news was announced online on April 8th, they were very excited that the two years of hard work had paid off.

The COVID-19 disrupted the rhythm of our lives. In the first half of 2020, a large number of competitions were postponed or canceled. However, adversity has inspired a fighting spirit in the students of SHSID. We use online tools to improve club communities and communications between club members. In the end, with the joint efforts of instructors and students, we have achieved as many results as last year. Progress continues, and exploration continues. SHSID is committed to building a diversified and high-level development platform for students through various online and offline integration methods to help students focus on their interests.

(Written by Chen Lin Pictures by Chen Lin)