Rivers team qualifies for Global Round World Scholars Cup

In the weekend of the 6th and 7th of April Rivers DP1 students Marise Aydinli, Golshan Akbari and Marjoleine Mooijman attended the Regional Round of the World Scholars Cup (WSC) at the International School in Amsterdam.

Marjoleine Mooijman explains:  

"The World Scholars Cup is a team competition in which 3 team members compete with other teams from all around the world, in a multitude of activities:

• Scholars bowl (a team event in which the teams answer multiple-choice questions as quickly as possible)
• Collaborative writing (each team member chooses a topic in which to write an individual essay; the scores of each team member are later added together)
• Challenge (multiple choice tests are taken individually; the individual scores of the team members are later added together)
• Team debate (a debate about three different topics where your team argues against other teams)

The WSC consists of 3 rounds:

- Regionals, which we attended this weekend

- Globals, held this year in either:

o Beijing (China National Convention Centre) on June the 21st to 26th 2019

o The Hague (The World Forum) on July 21st to 26th 2019

o Sydney (International Convention Centre Sydney) on August 15th to 20th 2019

- Champions, held at Yale University in the US at around November of this year

A team must participate in a regional round and then in a global round to be allowed to participate in Yale. To progress from one round to another, the team must be ranked in the top teams of the round.

We had a lot of success, winning medals and qualifying for the Global Rounds. This amazed all of us because we studied a minimal amount (less than 2 hours), mostly due to a lot of tests in the past few weeks.

The 2019 topics which we had to study are all connected to the general theme of “A World on the Margins”. This theme is explored through the following 6 subjects:

- Special Area: Unsolved Mysteries

- Social Studies: On the Edge of Society

- History: Neglected Histories

- Sciences: Enabling Technologies

- Art and Music: Louder than Words

- Literature: Voices from the Margins

These subjects are extremely interesting, because they are not studied at school and they are all seamlessly connected together, creating a Theory of Knowledge-like perspective. However, this does create a pitfall, because it means that every team member has to understand all 6 subjects in order to excel.

One of our favourite aspects of WSC was that we met a lot of new people from different (international) schools, who we will hopefully meet again in the Globals. The debate was also very fun, in the sense that when we discovered a good strategy as to how to structure our points, we “easily” surpassed the other teams, increasing our overall ranking.

We hope to attend the Global Round in the Summer and the Champions Round at Yale in November, proudly representing Rivers."

More information about the World Scholars Cup: http://www.scholarscup.org/