The World Scholar's Cup was founded in 2007 to celebrate the joy of learning. It's a rewarding experience and enrichment opportunity that promotes critical thinking, and motivates students to demonstrate their existing strengths and discover new ones. It is an academic decathlon held throughout the world, and includes four key events: a Collaborative Writing event, Team Debate, Scholar's Bowl quiz, and the Scholar's Challenge.

World Scholar's Cup at WAB is an extra curricular activity available to Middle and High School students, with the guidance of teachers and enrichment staff. Since its inception in 2009, WAB students have participated in Regional and Global WSC competitions in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Dubai and, most recently, Yale University, USA.

This year's Beijing round was held over two days at the International School of Beijing (ISB), gathering over 250 students from schools throughout Beijing. WAB participated in the Junior and Senior Divisions with 7 teams, or 23 students, from Middle School and High School, respectively.

Having participated in several World Scholar's Cup events before, my team of three (Evan Liu, Brandon Cohen and myself), along with two eighth-grade teams, returned to this competition with a great sense of pride and responsibility, and were the only WAB team in the Senior division of the competition. On the first day, we embarked in an attempt to ace as many subjects as possible, after cramming a sufficient load of names, history, famed agents of espionage, the basics of game theory, and much, much more. We encountered both hilarious and unforeseen successes – particularly in the testing aspect - as well as a few letdowns. All in all, however, we ended up rather satisfied with our accomplishments.

At the outset, we took on the Collaborative Writing stage, in which we ended up placing second as a team. We were provided with a myriad of topics, and were given 20 minutes to pool our collective ideas and scribble pages of notes. The 50 minutes that followed were devoted to individual writing time, during which we extracted as many sarcastic phrases as possible, and perhaps a few solid facts.

With a few minutes to panic, we then went on to the Scholar's Challenge test, a gruesome packet of 120 questions spanning a range of pre-determined subjects, which we had to answer in only one hour.

The Team Debate is an integral part of the World Scholar's Cup, which gives us the opportunity to apply everything we've learned and explored as a team. We were assigned 3 rooms for debates against students from all across the Beijing region, and were able to conquer every single one.

The second day was slightly more laid-back. The entire morning was allocated to the Scholar's Bowl, another skewer of trivia questions. The stakes rose between the beginning and the end of each of the six rounds, concluding with the bonus round, and thousands of points available.

The day ended with a talent show (which we, admittedly, have tended to avoid throughout the years), and finally, the awards ceremony.

Despite this being our first year competing in the Senior Division, we scored very well as a team, and came home with a neck-full of medals. Our team achievements included 2nd place overall, 2nd place in Collaborative Writing, 4th place in Team Debate, and 3rd place in the Scholar's Bowl. Thus, we've qualified for the Global Round, which will be held in Singapore in June 2014.

In the Junior Division, WAB students also scored very well, winning 2nd place overall, 3rd place in Collaborative Writing, and 2nd place in Team Debate, among others.

The World Scholar's Cup has given us a prime opportunity to compete against both the memorizers and the innovative students, and to meet like-minded students from across the world. Thank you to all our teachers and parents for their support.