2023-06-23 13:38:42
Barcelona”I knew that I had worked hard and that the grade could be good, but a 10 is not a big deal”, says Carla Vendrell, the only student to have scored a 10 in the 2023 selectivity. She explains this by phone to ARA from Menorca, where she has been on holiday with five friends for a few days and where she found out her grade a few minutes before the rest. “We were doing table work and a PAU coordinator called me to tell me that I had gotten a 10. It was a little before six in the afternoon, when we knew the grades would come out,” he remembers. When Carla hung up she didn’t say anything. They had agreed with their friends that they would not talk about the subject until they all knew the note. “I was a bit in shock and I almost didn’t react, but when they found out they started screaming. We’re very happy because we all did well and we think we’ll get in where we wanted,” he says as he tries to silence the phone so he doesn’t stop receiving calls. In fact, she herself explains that she didn’t expect it because she knew she had gotten a 10, but no one had told her that she was the only one in all of Catalonia who had reached that mark this year in a PAU competition in which the 97% of students passed and the average grade was 6.78.
Carla graduated from the Institut la Garrotxa in Olot, the same municipality where just two years ago she was world champion in figure skating with the Trampa Mortal show group in the Paraguayan championship. The persistence she has acquired through the practice of this sport is one of the qualities that the director of the institute, Jordi Antiga, highlights in her, who recognizes that results like these are a way of recognizing a job well done by the center, but that the credit goes mainly to the student: “She is a hard-working person and very perfectionist. She has put a lot of effort into it and has very good work habits.”
Performance of the Trappa Mortal group from Olot in the Paraguay championship
Carla has decided to do a law degree at the Pompeu Fabra University: “It has always been the career that has drawn my attention the most. Since I was little I have been watching series and reading articles on the subject, and now I was even more strengthens my vocation for law,” he explains. However, he had as a second option to do journalism or philology. The director of the institute explains that, to be able to practice law, Vendrell did the humanities high school, adding the optional mathematics applied to the social sciences. And this is precisely the subject that Carla explains that she did least well (she got a 9.5). However, the fact that he wanted to enter a career where a very high grade is not needed – last year in law at the UPF he had a cutoff grade of 10.9 out of 14 – and that he already had a very good high school grades meant that she wasn’t too bad at PAU.
What has happened to Carla is the opposite of the usual trend in terms of the differences between the high school grades and the selectivity of most students: she got a slightly higher grade in the PAU than in the high school, where he had an average of 9.83. This is also emphasized by Antiga, who insists on saying that one of the things the center values most, beyond good results, is that “selectivity grades are aligned with those on the high school transcript.”
Edgar, one of the seven students with a 9.9
Apart from Carla’s 10, in all of Catalonia there were seven students who got a 9.9, one girl who got a 9.8 and three who got a 9.7 in the general phase. None of the highest marks are from the same institute and there is no student from Barcelona among the best rated. Among those who have remained one tenth out of 10 is Edgar Garcia, who completed high school at Lestonnac l’Ensenyança in Tarragona and who wants to do a degree in physics at the University of Barcelona. “It appeals to me because it combines a lot of subjects that I like, physics obviously, but also maths and a bit of chemistry. I think it’s the best way to mix them all,” he explains.
In his case, he arrived with an average of 10 in high school and the only subject in the common phase where he has not achieved the maximum score is English, with a 9.5. He admits that he wasn’t one of those who studied the most: “I think I had a good high school cushion and I simply went over what I already knew to consolidate it, but I didn’t kill myself studying six hours every day either.” When he wasn’t studying, he spent his time at the Tarragona Conservatory, where he teaches piano and percussion. In fact, he says that if he didn’t do physics he would have devoted himself to music.
Beyond the students with the best grades, in the general results the subject with the highest average was German, with an 8.32; followed by French, with 7.45, and the Spanish language (7.39). The common subjects with the lowest average grades were English, with an average of 7.03; Catalan language, with a 6.7, and Italian, with a 6.58. On the other hand, 95% of the students who have been examined have chosen to take the tests with the statements in Catalan.
#skating #world #champion #selection