Conquering Chemistry: IB chemistry students beat out the competition
Matthew Chow and Jared Simmons, seniors, recently qualified to participate in the national Chemistry Olympiad, an annual competition organized by the American Chemical Society.
Chow and Simmons took part in the local competition on March 17. “I thought it was a good opportunity just to see what I had learned,” Chow said. “I’ve taken two and half years of chemistry already so I figured I should put what I’d learned to the test.”
Students take a 90 minute multiple choice test which covers “general chemistry”, often going beyond what is taught throughout high school. According to Simmons, “it focused a lot on AP type questions.”
“I didn’t feel that I had done that well (in the local competition),” Chow said. “It turns out that you didn’t have to do that well numerically in order to advance. You just have to beat out the competition.”
The 10 highest scoring students in each local competition move on to the national round. “We had two people who placed in the top 10 as well as first and second runner up from the region,” Deborah Dogancay, IB chemistry teacher, said.
After about two weeks of waiting, Chow and Simmons found out that they had scored high enough to advance into the next round. Elizabeth Zhang, senior, placed first runner up in the local exam and Zachary Chin, freshman, placed second runner up.
Although Chow relied solely on the knowledge he’s gathered from chemistry classes for the first round, he felt that the national competition required more preparation.
“I’ve gone online, taken a couple more tests. I went back through the test that I took last time,” Chow said.
According to Dogancay, the exam is “more geared toward the AP curriculum than the IB curriculum”. She added that because of this, Chow, Simmons, and other IB students were at a disadvantage on the written test, but “are much more prepared to design an experiment and conduct it on their own.”
On April 18, Chow and Simmons participated in the national competition at Westmont College, which consisted of a 90 minute multiple choice test, a 105 minute free response section, and a 90 minute lab. For the lab section, the students were presented with two questions and various materials that they had to use to create and carry out the labs.
“The free response section was really difficult,” Simmons said. “I didn’t finish all of the questions.”
Over 1,000 students competed in the national competition and of those, only 20 make it on to the next round. Results of the exam are expected to come out in June.
The students who do advance will attend a two week long chemistry boot camp at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado this June. Four of those students will go on to represent the country at the 47th annual International Chemistry Olympiad in Azerbaijan this July.
“It was fun,” Chow said. “Not everyone will think so, but if you’re in IB chemistry, you should take the test.”
