Ace student earns right to ease up on his studies this year

Michael Wang. Photo / Supplied

Michael Wang plans to try a few new subjects and take things easy now that he's in his final year of high school.

It's not that the Year 13 Macleans College student is lazy or unambitious - far from it - but he has already aced the exams that most of his peers are all working towards this year.

And, not only has he aced them a year ahead of everyone else, he's done it in two completely different qualification systems.

The hardworking teen spent last year, when he was in Year 12, studying for the A Level Cambridge International Exams and the NZ Scholarship exams which are based on NCEA and mostly sat by Year 13 students.

This week he received news that he not only passed both sets of exams but topped most of them too.

He won a highly prized Premier Scholarship Award, given to the country's top nine students each year, each of whom will receive $10,000 a year for three years of tertiary study.

And, if that wasn't enough to make him smile, Michael will receive another top prize at a special ceremony in Auckland last night after being named as the country's top 'A' Level Scholar in the Cambridge examinations.

Michael studied the Cambridge syllabus at school last year and worked on the NZQA Scholarship after hours - although admits to leaving much of the latter until the end of the year due to lack of time.

"It's a big syllabus to cover ... I didn't have that much time to look at that because I only looked at it after class. Scholarship material is based on the NCEA course so as a Cambridge student it was quite a challenge."

He said it was rewarding doing so well in both sets of examinations, but not something he'd set his sights on.

"I'm not the kind of person who tends to hope or strive for these kind of things [coming top] - you kind of give it your best shot and hope something good happens."

Michael is yet to decide which university he'll attend but would like to go to medical school next year.

Until then he plans to take it slightly easier this year and has chosen some different subjects to study while his mates work towards what he has already mastered.

Michael is one of 9670 students who took part in the Scholarship exams last year and the 7th Macleans student to be awarded a Premier award - something the school is very proud of.

The other Scholarship Premier Award winners are: Stewart Alexander from Christchurch Boys' High School, David Bellamy from Christ's College, Athene Laws from St Cuthbert's College, Stephen Mackereth from King's College, Max Wilkinson from Papanui High School and Yuanye Xu from Westlake Boys' High School.

Michael Wang

* Cambridge exams - Named a top NZ 'A' Level scholar after achieving Top in the World in physics and Top in NZ in biology and chemistry.

* NZ Scholarship exams - Won one of nine Premier Scholarships after gaining outstanding status in biology, chemistry, mathematics with calculus, physics and scholarships in science and statistics and modelling.