Pioneering IB Excellence with a 44: From Finland to Space
How a national taekwondo champion reached a near-perfect IB Diploma score and chose practical experience over prestige
Sumedha applied to universities across Europe and secured offers from most of them: TU Delft, KU Leuven, technical universities in Sweden and Denmark. TU Delft had been her dream school since childhood. It offers aerospace engineering directly - a career she wishes to pursue. She was accepted and turned to a local university anyway, to build her expansive knowledge and hands-on experience.
Academic Snapshot
44/45
IB Score
5 out of 6
Subjects graded 7
National Level
Champion, Taekwondo
Aalto University
Majoring in Computational Engineering
A school picked for thorough guidance
Sumedha was first among her family to pursue the IB and to choose the best fit school for her. Her initial choice happened almost by accident and highlights the practical approach she takes to achieve her goals. In sixth grade, a friend mentioned her sister was applying to Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu (SYK) for the IB. She looked into it, and decided the stellar reputation of the school and the small teacher to student ratio would suit her academic intensity well.
Training through the IB, not around it
Ten years of competitive swimming, then a switch to taekwondo at eleven or twelve and on to a national title. Sumedha trained three to four times a week while pursuing IB1 without ever officially joining the national team. She was avoiding the travel commitment that came with it. “It wasn't so much about the prestige, I guess,” she says. IB2 didn't leave as much room for both: science Internal Assessments (IAs) landed back-to-back with the Extended Essay (EE), then Math IAs, oral exams and mocks. Training dropped off after January.
The exam that didn’t go to plan
Sumedha started on Revision Village for math, working through the free topics without much urgency. Then an early exam proved challenging. She went back through the difficult questions properly and noticed the reasoning within RV’s platform matched what showed up on the real exam.
"The more questions you do, the more exposure you get, and you're able to solve a wider bunch of problems.” - Sumedha
She upgraded her subscription for math, and began to also use RV physics revision. Calculus - a subject she'd never touched before the IB is where she says it mattered most.
CASE STUDY: Excellence in Every Pursuit
Sumedha’s IB Results
7
Mathematics AA HL
7
Physics HL
7
Chemistry HL
7
Biology SL
7
English A SL
6
Finnish A SL
Practical experience over prestige
When university offers began to roll in for Sumedha, Aalto University won out over TU Delft for one reason: computational engineering gives her a broader base before she specializes into aerospace. Furthermore, Aalto's department culture rewards students who build their own projects. Through Aalto's satellite exposition, she landed an internship in space instrumentation at Aboa Space Research Oy, a startup in Turku; work she calls its own category of problem-solving, shaped by constraints that don't exist on Earth.
"I thought I would choose practical experience over prestige.” — Sumedha
Her advice: Don’t be afraid to ask
Chase experience you're genuinely curious about, not experience that looks good on paper. Sumedha's own Extended Essay - a gaseous radiation detector built with a professor she cold-emailed after reading his work in a physics journal came from that same instinct.
"If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you ask, there’s a tiny chance the answer is yes.” - Sumedha