Can I begin by giving a big thank you to the 15+ people who sent an encouragement email to the student finalists. I read these all out to the AUSSEF Team at breakfast and it was both moving and inspirational. These emails were a strong reminder that there is a large band of supporters back home who are keenly following their progress and are praying and cheering for them. This was the best preparation for their huge day of judging.
Judging Day was split into three sections. From 8am to 9:30am, the time was allocated to Special Award Judges only. Isabelle Aduna was the only AUSSEF student who had a Special Award judge during this period. The second section of judging was from 9:30am to 12:00pm, where Grand Award Judges were scheduled to come before lunch and the third section of judging from 1:00pm to 4:00pm was again set aside for the remainder of the scheduled Grand Award Judges. Special Award judges were still able to interview students in a break where a finalist had no scheduled Grand Award judges. Some of our students had unscheduled visits from Grand Award judges and over half of our AUSSEF projects had visits from their category co-Chair judges, which is usually a good sign. The co-Chair is the experienced judge who is in charge of the judges for their particular category. At the end of the day it is the co-Chair who organises the allocation of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Grand Awards that go to 25-27% of the finalists in that category. So if the co-Chair visits a project it means that they are aware and knowledgeable about that project when the judges work out the final placings, so it is in their mind.
Each student was provided with a list of scheduled Grand Award judges and most were allocated around 8 to 9 judges. Isabelle Aduna, in Chemistry, had the most number of scheduled judges with 14, while Tim Wilson, in Robotics and Intelligent Machines, had the least with only 6 scheduled judges. Overall, the general response to the judging was positive, but cautiously positive. The majority of the judges kept their cards close to their chest and did not show much emotion. No-one had a really bad judge and no-one had an ultra-positive judge who told them that they should win a prize. So at the end of the day, we just don’t know how they really went – we will have to wait for the Grand Award ceremonies.
At the end of Judging, the majority of our AUSSEF team came out of the Exhibit Hall with linked arms, which was an extra special moment for the hundreds of adult spectators who were cheering on the finalists as they finished judging. We also filmed each of the AUSSEF finalists, giving a short review of their judging experience and they have given their consent for those reading this Update to be the first to see their personal responses to the judging experience: Segment 1 – Johnathon Zhong (James Ruse Agricultural High School, NSW), Chloe Yew (Norwood International School, SA), Isabelle Aduna (Wellington Girls’ College, NZ) & Cathy Zhang (James Ruse Agricultural High School, NSW); Segment 2 – Naman Doshi (North Sydney Boys High School, NSW), Yemi Olaitan (Redeemer Baptist School, NSW) & Jesse Rumball-Smith (Wellington College, NZ); Segment 3 – Lily Rofail (PLC Sydney, NSW), Anubhav Ammangi (Redeemer Baptist School, NSW) & Tim Wilson (Barker College, NSW).
This huge day finished with the Student Mixer where students could just mingle with other students from around the world, could play a whole variety of games or for those who had any energy left, they could let off their tension on the dance floor.
Thursday (tomorrow Ohio time), is Public Visitation Day and the Special Awards ceremony. For those interested they are live streaming the Special Awards and this is the link to watch it. It starts Friday 11am (Wellington time) and Friday 9am (AEST). I don’t think we will feature much but I have been known to be wrong!