Nicole Chow, 16, today discovered she had achieved Level 9, the highest grade possible, in all 11 of her subjects, in addition to the Level 9 she had already secured after sitting her Chinese exams early two years ago.
Her remarkable achievement came seven days after her sister Melanie, 18, achieved A* grades in her three A Levels: Physics, Maths and Further Maths, on top of an A* in her EPQ A Level (the dissertation-style Extended Project Qualification) last year.
Nicole, who is currently completing an internship at a research company that researches DNA vaccines, said: “I’m very happy. I was really surprised, I didn’t expect to get so many 9s and in subjects I wasn’t so sure of, like English and Greek. Maybe I should have been more confident!”
Nicole was one of five students at Benenden today to achieve a clean sweep of Level 9 grades.
Of her elder sister’s results last week, she said: “I was really happy for her because she got into the university she wanted to go to and she’s passionate about what she wants to do.”
Asked if she felt pressure to excel after Melanie’s success, Nicole said: “Kind of, but not much because we’re different people – we’re interested in different things so it doesn’t matter that much. She’s more into the Physics and Maths side and I’m more on the Biology and Chemistry side now.”
Nicole is now looking forward to Sixth Form at Benenden where she will be studying A Levels in Biology, Chemistry, Maths and Computer Science.
The sisters have been heavily involved in School life at Benenden; they are both Music Scholars and are especially active in Science. They jointly represented the UK in the European Nuclear Competition for Secondary Schools in Italy last summer and Melanie was part of the Benenden team that won an optical telescope from CERN in a Beamline for Schools competition.
Melanie has now left Benenden’s Sixth Form and is about to start a training camp in Cambridge in preparation for representing the UK in the International Astrophysics Olympiad in Vietnam.
She said of her younger sister’s achievements: “I’m really proud of Nicole. I’m really happy that she got all 9s this time even though we were all really shocked – after every paper she came out saying it was so bad! I was the same in my GCSEs and A Levels too: we tend to worry a lot but have realised that worrying doesn’t do much for the results!”
Melanie, who will now be studying Physics at Imperial College London, said of her own results: “The requirement for Imperial was pretty high so I was really happy with my results.”
Among her A Level successes, Melanie achieved full marks in her Maths A Level paper 1 – the one that was so difficult it prompted a petition and was reported in the national media. “That was a shock and pretty nice when I saw it,” she said.
Benenden School is a boarding and day school in Benenden, just outside Cranbrook in Kent. It is regarded as one of the leading girls’ schools in the UK and for the past four years has been included in the Spear’s Global Index of the world’s 100 best schools.
- Benenden is holding a Sixth Form open event on Thursday 10 September and several open days throughout the Autumn Term. Book here.