A huge congratulations to all our 2019 IB graduates who returned to school earlier this week for their graduation ceremony with special mention to Emma Taylor who earned the highest mark in New Zealand!

Emma was the only student in New Zealand to score the maximum possible, 45 out of 45, putting her in the top 3% of graduates in the world.

Emma chose to study IB due to the depth of subjects on offer and the global perspective the study offered.

“I chose IB because I wanted to study a broad range of subjects and I also wanted an international career in the future. The chance to study economics, particularly developmental economics is quite unique for a high school curriculum. IB taught me a lot about time management and taught me how to retain knowledge and use it in different contexts. It taught me to question things, particularly knowledge – you don’t necessarily take things at face value.

“I want to have a career such as working for organisations like the IMF or the World Bank, leveraging human rights issues in developing countries and working with loans and projects that would be able to develop their economy so they can get out of the poverty trap – I’ve had my heart set on this since seeing a story on the news when I was in Year 9 and IB was the right pathway to achieve that.”

Emma’s success has earned her a place at Cambridge University in the UK, where she will read economics at Corpus Christi College, starting in September 2020.

Emma will receive her Top Scholar Award at the International Baccalaureate Top Scholars’ Awards Ceremony at Parliament tomorrow where she will be joined by Abigail Lai who also achieved an IB Diploma score of over 40 points.