By Ryan Ding, Staff Reporter
Senior Aaron Wang was among the top 20 chemistry students nationwide to attend the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad Camp to prepare for the International Chemistry Olympiad last year. This year, he hopes to repeat his success.
The U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad is a chemistry competition with around 16,000 student participants each year. The competition consists of two rounds, the local exam and national exam. After these rounds, the top 20 highest scoring students from the national exam receive invitations to participate in a two-week-long study camp in the summer. Of these students, four go on to represent the United States at the prestigious International Chemistry Olympiad.
Wang’s success involved countless hours of dedicated studying. According to Dr. Scott Best, Wang’s Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry teacher, Wang would often spend hours of his free time studying chemistry.
“Aaron’s a great student. He’s intelligent, curious and probably one of the best chemists that I’ve had a chance to teach here,” Best said. “He was coming in on his free time. I don’t know how many periods he came in to just practice experiments and work basically on his own at home studying.”
Wang began learning chemistry in sophomore year as part of the AP Chemistry curriculum. Despite starting later than many of his competitors, Wang caught up quickly.
“I found that I really liked to do chemistry, and naturally, I would invest a lot of time into the subject,” Wang said. “I would just do it for fun and then study camp just sort of came as the added benefits of just doing what I love.”
Though Wang did not make the national team last year, he hopes to represent the United States in the International Chemistry Olympiad this year. After high school, he plans to pursue chemistry further at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he will be attending in the fall. Wang believes his success with chemistry can be attributed to his passion for the subject.
“In the end, (what) allowed me to actually do what I did was that I was doing what I really love to do,” Wang said. “That principle can really be generalized to anything no matter what you like to do, so long as you’re passionate about it and you invest the time into it.”
Ryan Ding can be reached at [email protected].
