KDU Pre-U Students Seize The Gold!

PETALING JAYA, 29 July 2015 – Three students from KDU College’s School of Pre-University Studies, Deena Natasya, Bryan Liew Zhi Ming and Boey Zhi Xuan, proved their brilliance by making the college proud of their triumph in the IMU Science Discovery Challenge, which took place on 25 of July, with over 110 teams participating against each other for the grand prize.

Split into two categories; secondary school and pre-university, the challenge took shape in the form of multiple-choice question (MCQ) quizzes in 3 levels, made up of questions from selected subjects such as biology, chemistry and physics.

The trio had to answer 40 MCQ in the preliminary round before emerging 11th out of the top 30 teams that qualified for the semi-finals. From the semi-finals, they then went on head to head with the other teams to secure a spot in the final round.

“We really didn’t have high expectations for the finals as we progressed on being at the 8^th spot out of 10 teams. The final round was a nerve-wracking experience for us,” said Boey.

He explained that the organisers adopted the Kahoot! answering system for the final round whereby the questions were projected on the screen in front of the crowd and also for the finalists to answer.

“The sooner the question is answered, the higher your score for that particular question. If we answered the question correctly, that is!” piped Bryan.

“To be honest, we had a lot of training before the competition. I guess it was our experience in answering many, many MCQ which helped us succeed. We answered the questions surprisingly quickly and kept our lead from the beginning to the end - a total of 20 questions, 14 of which we answered correctly,” continued Bryan.

When asked on their thoughts upon being announced as grand prize winners, the trio broke into laughter and grinned. “The whole competition was so stressful and we really didn’t even think we could win, especially with me feeling under the weather during the semi-finals. We thought making it to the finals was great enough, let alone winning the grand prize,” said Deena.

“We were definitely surprised. The other teams were performing so consistently so we just did our best,” added Boey. “The thought of the grand prize helped, of course,” joked Bryan with a cheeky grin.

The trio accredited their win partly to their lecturers. They thanked their lecturers from KDU’s School of Pre-University Studies for not only hand-picking the three of them to be part of the competition, but also helping to prepare them for the challenge.

“Our lecturers really took their time and put in extra effort by drilling us on questions and topics across the subjects in order to refresh our memories and also ready us. We couldn’t have answered all those questions if it weren’t for the preparation made earlier," said Boey, to which his team mates murmured their agreement.

To find out how you can hit the ground running with KDU College, log on to www.kdu.edu.my or call 03-5565 0538 (KDU University College, Utropolis, Glenmarie) / 03-7953 6688 (KDU College, Damansara Jaya).