Justine Leung is an RCHK alumnus currently studying Law at HKU. She spoke with The RCHK Truth about life before and after graduating with a perfect IB score of 45..

Could you give us some basic information about yourself?

I graduated from RCHK in May 2021. I took English, Music and History HL. I was a music scholar from Year 11 until graduation, and I did a lot of things in school, most notably secondary strings (the secondary string ensemble). I was also a Qing house captain for a year, and I also was the co-president on the student council with my friend Taylor. I had the opportunity to participate in the 24 hour race, which was really fun to do as I got to organise a lot of different service activities with people from other schools as well.

What did it mean to you to get a 45 for your IB? 

Obviously, I put a lot of effort into studying but I know that most of the credit goes to the amazing teachers who helped me through these horrible two years (i.e. dealing with my nagging for IA feedback), a lot of luck, and the sweet, sweet M21 grade boundaries for my subjects. When I got my final results, I was certainly overjoyed— but mostly shocked and thought, “Are they sure they marked the right papers?!” It was a pleasant surprise since I was predicted substantially lower, so I was very relieved to have fulfilled the conditional offer requirements I needed to get into my first choice university program (since the visceral fear of losing my offers was the main motivator for getting through final exams). 

Advice for future IB cohorts: your PG matters much more than your final grade since that’s what you use for university applications, so please hand in your IA drafts and do well on your mocks.

Do you feel perfect?

Oh, absolutely not! I think a recurring theme of my life has just been grappling with being a dysfunctional mess but still trying to pass as functional enough to exist in society.

How does life in university compare to secondary school?

I’m sure everyone’s university life differs between what we face now and what we face eventually. I have a lot of friends who went overseas to Canada or the UK to study and they’re definitely experiencing a lot of things that I haven’t gotten to experience since I decided to stay in Hong Kong to do my undergraduate degree first before potentially exploring other options. I feel like there isn’t as strong of a sense of school identity here at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Although, I’m sure it’s because I had such a strong sense of school identity at Renaissance College where there was a lot of opportunity for  interaction within the student body of RC and with the staff as well; which I think is something that you don’t get to the same extent when you move on to university. I guess most of my interactions with the staff are some of the things I miss the most now that I’m in university.

Do you have any particular tips for IB students who want to achieve a higher grade?

Generally, I think it’s very important to choose subjects that are more appropriate for your level. For example, if you know you’re not gonna be doing medicine or engineering, then you can minimise the number of heavy science subjects that you take. Everyone has different ideas on what a harder or easier course is depending on their weaknesses and strengths. I think if you spend more time on your easier courses instead of just the harder ones to show off, you won’t spread yourself too thin. If you spend too much time on your harder courses, you’ll have a lot less time on your easier subjects, and that may impact your overall final grade. Revision is really a zero-sum game. it’s not about putting in the least possible effort but it’s more about putting in effort in the most strategic way possible to maximise the utility of that effort. So I would say to limit your harder subjects to those that would actually come in handy to your career choice.

Another thing is to ask older students about your subject choices. I think most older students are really keen to share advice on topics like these. For example, if you want to take Physics HL, I’m sure there would be a lot of older students who would be willing to talk about whether that subject is suitable for you.

Also, if you take certain subjects, such as Music HL, I would highly recommend you put in more work in the summer before IB even though it’s not mandatory. On a personal anecdote, I did my ATCL exam in September, which was a short time after our first IB music recital, and since I had to prepare for ATCL in the summer anyways, I got all of my performing done in the first month of IB, which is already 25% of the course load of music done. So ask your teachers if there's anything you can do over the summer before IB so you can put your focus on other things during the school year. 

During exams: bring a jacket, collect all your stationery, and if you have long hair, tie it up. Also make sure you don’t forget to have a good breakfast. In one of my exams, I was really hungry because I didn’t have a full breakfast, so my stomach kept making these really loud noises throughout the exam hall. The experience of that was even worse than the paper itself, because it was one of the papers that I was really prepared for. So the hardest part of that exam wasn’t actually the test itself, instead it was trying to focus because my stomach kept making weird noises. So eat your breakfast, kiddos!

What career are you currently pursuing?

I’m currently doing a Bachelors of Laws degree, but I still don’t know what areas of law I want to practice in, or what I want to do after I get my law degree, so you might have to come back to me in a few years with that question.

As an RC alumni, what was your most memorable experience here?

This sounds so cliche, but it would be all the music stuff that I had the chance to do as a music scholar because that’s really something that I probably will never be able to do again in my life. I don’t really get the chance to touch music stuff anymore since I’m literally a law student. 

On a slight tangent, if you have any type of hobbies or extracurricular activities you like, you should not take them for granted, and you should definitely make the most out of all of it. Take a lot of pictures, take risks, do stupid things. In the long term it’s going to be the silly memories you make that are gonna outweigh those school projects that go wrong. The failures aren’t really going to matter as much in the grand scheme of all the memories that you make during your limited time at RC.

Last but not least, can you give us some of your viola jokes?

Oh my gosh yes, I have an entire website for this. You should save this. It's very useful: http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/viola-jokes.html. It’s a website from MIT called Viola Jokes (part 1). 

My favourite one is “What's the definition of a minor second? Two violists playing in unison.” So the joke here is that they can’t play in tune!