Hear from our students and alumni from across our four schools. They're creating a splash in their chosen fields.
Hillingdon student ready to become a leader who creates equal opportunities for all
Eemil (in red coat) with Hillingdon students in The Hague, Netherlands, for Model United Nations.
Hillingdon student Eemil Moisio is predicted to complete the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) with a top score of 45. As well as thriving academically, during his six years at ACS Hillingdon, Eemil has made significant contributions to the school: he is a talented and recognised artist, with work selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, he is a leader in the Model United Nations (MUN), and is President of the National Honor Society.
He has also helped establish the Grade 9 mentorship programme, and is currently working on a number of initiatives to support Grade 11 students with their DP studies. Next on the agenda for Eemil? He has been offered places at the University of Oxford, Dartmouth College, Columbia and Yale University.
Eemil believes his ACS education, particularly studying the IB, has helped him not only excel during his time at school, but has set him up well for the challenges of tomorrow. He explains: “The range of skills that you develop through the IB is unparalleled. While the content is just as challenging as any other system’s (or more!), your grade hinges not only on you knowing the content, but being able to apply it, and you learn to produce your own ideas too.
University of Oxford
“‘Leadership’ is too often defined as taking on a position in a club that already has its duties outlined - a tick-box for university. But at ACS Hillingdon we’ve learned that if you’re willing to take on an initiative, you can. You won’t be given instructions, it’s up to you to define what you want to achieve. My experiences with the MUN and National Honors Society have made the prospect of assuming leadership at university level, and beyond, feel much more attainable.”
Austrian-born Edith Bukovics is a rare talent. She cultivated some of her intellectual, artistic, and athletic abilities while an IB Diploma student at ACS Cobham. After graduating in 1997 and soon after enrolled at St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, where she studied English. Edith is now a well-established actress working in theatre, film and TV.
Edith’s early life was one of nearly constant movement with several international relocations. By the time she was 14, Edith’s father’s work with Shell had taken their family to The Netherlands, Norway, Austria, New Zealand and the US. This globetrotting didn’t initially strike Edith as unusual. "It took me quite a while to truly appreciate that this was not the norm and that I’d been incredibly lucky to learn four languages by the age of six. To experience so many different cultures and see so many varied landscapes by the time I was a teenager.”
Moving from Houston to the UK at 14, Edith comments on how “ACS Cobham had a nice combination of all things; sporty, a beautiful campus, a variety of people and a vigorous Baccalaureate programme”.
When asked recently about the IB Diploma as an actress with connections to London, New York, and Los Angeles, Edith says: “There are a lot of ways in which ACS support and encourage your autonomy and becoming as independent as a student as possible...
Since then Edith spent four months in Cyprus starring in her first feature film and landed more film roles, enjoying success in independent films such as My Last Five Girlfriends which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
Most recently Edith has been being doing voiceover work for all BP commercials shown nationally across the UK. New projects also include a web series about corporate actors. She is currently using this quarantine time to audition via self-tape for TV casting directors and voiceover work that’s coming in.
Making a splash at ACS Doha was Abdulaziz Hassan Al Obaidly. Having just completed his final year there, he now looks forward to studying Communication and Politics at leading US college Northwestern University’s Qatar campus. A swimmer since the age of three, by the time he was seven years old Qatari-born Abdulaziz was already representing his country on the global stage.
Juggling his American High School Diploma with international sporting commitments may not be the typical balancing act facing a High School student, but it is something Abdulaziz has been able to take in his stride. His family has been grateful to ACS Doha for its constant support in his swimming endeavours, as the budding Olympian has gone from strength to strength with an impressive medal haul while managing his studies, and smashing national records.
ACS Doha gave the Qatar team captain the flexibility to travel with his teammates to compete internationally during academic semesters, allowing him to take his classes and exams later, if he was out of the country. Sport is something the school considers to be an integral part of an active and happy life at school and at home.
Abdulaziz swims in the individual medley and specialises in the backstroke and the breaststroke. In the recent FINA Swimming World Cup in Doha, he broke two national records and came close to a third in the last leg of the global swimming series.
Inspired as a young boy by US swimming legend Michael Phelps, Abdulaziz has become a role model in his own right, inspiring a new generation. Swimming, he believes, has helped him prepare for the future because of the discipline involved in the way he trains and sets goals for himself. The importance of physical strength is matched by the mental strength required to be at peak performance.
While this year’s Olympics have been postponed to 2021, he remains determined to make it, whether that’s next year in Tokyo or 2024 in Paris.
Nearly 140 years after Charles Darwin's death, Egham (2008-2013) alumna Laura van Holstein has found strong evidence that proves one of the world-renowned naturalist, geologist and biologist’s evolution theories.
Laura went on to the University of Cambridge to pursue an undergraduate degree and PhD in Biological Anthropology. The hypothesis states that a species belonging to a larger genus should also include more subspecies. Laura used data modelling to prove Darwin's theory, which was not available to him.
Her studies investigated the relationship between species and the variety of subspecies to prove that the subspecies play an essential role in long-term evolutionary dynamics as well as in future evolution of the species.
"All of my ACS Egham teachers seemed to experience real joy from teaching, and really loved their subjects. Consequently, anything I tried out of real interest in what I was learning was met with a lot of enthusiasm. Ms Barbour, who taught English, was in love with language; and she taught so creatively, and that approach of looking at something from a non-traditional angle is still something I apply in my research.
“I also loved art classes. I suppose on some level, exercises like having to paint one object in different styles taught me, again, to examine things from various perspectives and to appreciate that different takes on a similar thing bring to the fore very different patterns. This is a dominant theme in my PhD thesis, albeit applied to biological systems across time. On a personal level, I felt very valued and appreciated in these classes – I'm sure I wasn't the only one because Mr Vaughan was the most enthusiastic, funny, and encouraging person to be around."
Now the Cambridge researcher is aiming to look at how her studies can be used to predict which species environmentalists should focus on to stop them from becoming endangered or extinct, something Darwin never did.