Sixth-former Bushry Basheer has qualified for the national final of the 2017 British Biology Olympiad.
The Year 13 pupil saw off competition from around 8,000 entrants to win a place at the final at Warwick University, where the 16 finalists will compete to represent the UK in the International Biology Olympiad.
Head of Biology Gillian Ridge said: “This is a fantastic achievement from one of the most humble and talented biologists I have met.”
In this year’s Olympiad, QE entered 35 sixth-formers, whose first-round results – 20 gold medals, 10 silvers, one bronze and three highly commended – represented a new QE record. Bushry (pictured below collecting the Biology prize at the School's Senior Awards ceremony in March) was the highest-scoring Year 13 pupil at QE and Michael Takla the highest scorer in Year 12.
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The 100 top-scoring gold medallists nationwide were then invited to take part in round 2, from which the national finalists were selected.
The 100 included seven boys from QE – Bushry and Michael, together with five other pupils, all from Year 13:
- Sam Friend
- Santhosh Ganeshamoorthy
- Viral Gudiwala
- Kavi Shah
- Abhishek Srivastava
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To prepare for round 1, the boys had a weekly training session, which included presentations, discussions and examination techniques. Most of the preparation, however, took place at home, with boys using advanced additional resources provided by the School. The competition involved two hour-long multiple-choice papers.
Unfortunately, of the seven, only Bushry was able to commit himself to the rigorous time commitment required to go on to round 2, which involved a 90-minute written paper.