CamBio Challenge success!

On Sunday 18th August, a team of 5 students; Jonathan Allen, Amber Buchanan, Jonathan Gillespie, Elsie McIntyre and Beth Ward, attended a celebration event at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, having been invited due to being one of the highly ranked teams in a newly-created national competition, the “CamBio Challenge”.

This competition was created to challenge students to think deeply about the sorts of questions that are asked in Cambridge interviews, within a Biology context. Throughout the year, teams of students responded to questions posed by the competition organisers, which were marked and awarded points based on the quality of the response provided.

The day started with an early flight and train-ride to Cambridge, where students took part in an ‘escape-room’ style activity, with a vast array of different logic-based puzzles. The students then attended an interesting lecture by challenge organiser Dr Andrew Catherall-Ostler, on the theme of Astro-Biology and biological concepts behind detection of alien life. Following this, all of the highly-ranked teams gathered together for the awards ceremony.

In total, there were over 2,500 students involved in the challenge, making up a total of 486 teams. It is extremely pleasing to report that Friends’ School team, “The Mighty Chondria”, came out as overall winners, being the top ranked team out of all 486 that were involved! Dr Catherall-Ostler, Bye-Fellow in Evolutionary Biology, was extremely complimentary about the team’s thorough research, novel ideas and entertaining video responses.

The day was finished up with a trip to the Museum of Zoology, observing some of Charles Darwin’s studies, and then ended with a celebratory pizza before returning home.