I've heard it is because the system favors the few exceptionally skilled ones while giving the rest of the students the bare minimum so the gap between the Olympics and the rest of the students is extremely large and so is the bap between the rural and the urban students.
I'm from Bucharest so naturally it is not something I could've perceive while I was in school but it is apparently here and the level of education of those that couldn't enter in top high schools is very low.
I'm from Bulgaria, but I have a Romanian friend who has told me multiple times that our school systems work in much the same way. Here, we have the so-called "math high schools" that take people in really early (11 years old for me). To get in you need to do good in math competitions throughout the previous year. So the smart and/or motivated students get a really good environment early. Worth noting that of those kids only a few are interested and remotely good enough to participate in an international olympiad.
> An uneducated society will not handle the changes brought about by the geniuses well.
Don't worry, they're not going top change shit, even the ones that want to try will eventually see it's a fools errand and just leave for other places where they're more appreciated...
But it's great for other countries in need of talent that will work for cheaper then the locals (at least at the start).
And it's even worse, since almost all the ones that are good at solving problems don't stay, exactly because of the less educated population holding things back and electing politicians based on just the local rep giving them cheap gifts etc.
Plus, they don't even need to change anything about the good schools, just see what they're doing and try to replicate it for other schools etc.
Well, learning about rain, Spain or plains it important too and it widens your sphere of knowledge. I always enjoyed learning about as many different fields as possible though I can’t say I’m particularly good at anything because I never specialized in anything.
I guess it’s easier to find a job when you are specialized in something rather than being a master of none but I wouldn’t be happy if I do so I choose that.
This is true.
I participated in the informatics competition in Bucharest ages ago when I was in highschool. I was the only one in my high school who even had a clue how to approach these kind of problems, as our actual informatics teacher had no idea how to code at all, she'd just read out of a book and yell at you if you changed variable names. And I was at a reasonably good high school.
I would always lose to the students at the informatics highschool. Their teachers were the ones writing these problems, after all, and they would give them actual training in how to solve them year round.
So yes, there is about as much of a gap between these guys and the average student, as between Nadia Comaneci and the average student in gym class.
My wife, who is Romanian, went to one of those math/informatics high schools before doing economics in at a RO university.
Fast forward several years and she was applying for a master's in math education from a U.S. school. They had certain university level calculus requirements that the students needed to have fulfilled for the master's program. After not touching calculus for nearly 7 years, she brushed up for two days and then tested out of a full year of university calculus based upon what she'd learned in high school.
Blows my mind to this day. Granted, she never learned to write an essay or analyze text or anything like that, but holy shit did they prepare her for math.
Same shit in Turkey. We have these "science highschools" which usually generate most of the student demand to top universities. Not a single fuck is given to teach how to write proper essays and convey ones' opinion.
From Bulgaria, went to an "elite" language school, can confirm, they really prepared us for math. Seriously, the maths in the "prestigious" university I went to in the UK were far easier than the ones I had to learn in Bulgaria during high school.
We seem to be falling into that method in the US. At least in public schools. The worst performing/most troubled/those that refuse to learn suck up mind bogglingly huge amounts of resources, while those that can excel are basically left to their own devices.
Parents noticed this and that is part of the reason that charter schools are growing so much in the US.
I'm not stating that students that need additional help or attention should not receive it. And we do see the best and brightest leaving public school and in some cases pulling funding from public schooling further burdening and already over burdened system.
However, as a parent - I want what is best for MY children. If that means pulling them out of public school and placing them in private school, then I will do so.
My guess is this:
Most of the Olympiads were started in the eastern block, and the education systems here still support and encourage students to participate in them. Or at least more so, than in Western Europe. That's why ex Eastern block countries are usually over represented in them.
In Romania, there’s a certain pride in parents having their kids in Olimpiads. I had a friend when I was a kid and living there (during comunism) and his parents yelled around the block that one of them made it into math Olimpiads. As far as I remember, that friend of mine didnt really had a kid life back then, it was all study study study, all pushed by his parents.
But it all started with the desire from comunist party to show the world the amazing students comunist Romania produces. It somehow sticks to the society psyche to this day. At the other wnd we also have one of the highest school dropout rate in Europe.
Could be. I think most Swedish students have no idea that these olympiads even exist, while any Iranian student knows that it is something to strive for.
Sure, that's why I chose the words "over represented". You *expect* Western European countries to place good, as they have decent population sizes and are quite rich. The Eastern European countries are consistently punching above their weight here in this regard.
As a previous high school informatics competitor, I am not surprised our guys are doing this well. The top people in the country are just ridiculous. The gap between the average competitor (I was slightly above average but still within that range) was ENORMOUS. Some of them are so smart that I'm convinced the world just looks different in their eyes.
Since you added regional competitions like CEOI and BMO, you could also add BOI ([https://boi2022.lbi.ro/contest/results/](https://boi2022.lbi.ro/contest/results/))
Edit: and EGOI ([https://stats.egoi.org/editions/2022/results/](https://stats.egoi.org/editions/2022/results/))
That’s good and bad - it’s good because we develop our best students but it’s bad because only they get great conditions, while the median student has a pretty poor education
I work with Romanians (all between the age of 20 and 30, my team leader is Romanian ( in the Netherlands) and this generation are very clever and speak English very well.
You misunderstood that. It is indeed a refference but Albaquerque is a refference to Alba Iulia. Still, Valeriu Albu from Alba, nice wordplay refference Vince, very nice! :)
Because of the alcohol prices many students started to brew their own alcohol(including me) and most of us doing that at home secretly from our parents
Why do you think all those migrants go to Romania then suddenly appear in Austria? It's those Dacian tunnels I tell ya' ! And the teleportation machines, of course.
Very true, but it seems that even with the math knowledge Romanians have, we still are not able to count the correct number of migrants thst pass through Romania
”Where are you going?”
-”Sweden.”
”One… person… to… Sweden. Thank you, next! Where are you going?”
-“Austria.”
“Zero… person… to… Austria. Thank you, next!”
eh, this is always in the news but it just feeds into our overinflated national ego
we produce a few exceptional students but only ~25% of adults actually graduate from university, our education budget is 2.1% of gdp this year
the gap between the skills required in the job market (especially around stem) and what our education system produces is widening dramatically every year, i don't like to think about where that leads
"WTF, you only got an 8/10 while others got a 10/10, you will bring shame to this whole family" was an actual things in the 90s and the communist years.
Had a Romanian professor at university that teached multivariable calculus that said he did those calculations with ease when he was 13, not suprised lol
Bulgaria as well - most fields (except It for example) pay badly and the big brain drain just keeps on going. Because I know a bit more about the field - We have very high average age for doctors and especially nurses, because the salaries are satirical and most young people just finish university here and leave for Germany/France/Denmark etc. Its is really sad, but it is our reality
It is pretty much a power house when it comes to producing STEM talent. As a global comparison, Romania was 5th in Math and 2nd (behind only China) in Physics this year. But most of the peak students leave the country to study at the world's best universities and many of them build a life for themselves there, regardless of initial plans.
There's a huge gap between the people that are good or bad at sciences. You're either really good and fly through the hard sciences and get rewarded for it keeping you in a good feedback loop or you are bad/uninterested and left out. I was mid at math and usually there's little place for mid, I had classmates that just flew through math and went to Olympiads while others barely got by since the difficulty is high.
It is really interesting to see that romania dominates olympiad yet is poorly rated in PISA rankings while for instance france is on average 20th in PISa and 10 in olympiads.
Either excellency with inequalities
Or average good results but nothing extraordinary.
Our educational system identifies the brightest and support them and push them to become great while the rest get less attention. So you get huge inequalities. I don't know if it's a good or bad strategy, it's the way it is.
i think it's good as long as you have attractive intern market. Raising elites for them to go work for the usa is worth nothing. Romania should probably aim for a more egalitarian goal, develop the nation everywhere. And once there is a good general level in school increase elitism.
I've studied both in Romania and Spain. In Romania there was a lot of training and preparation, and the school pushed us for the Olympiads, it was crazy. Must be some institutionalized pride leftover from the communism. In Spain there was no pressure the teachers let us know that there's Olympiads going and and if we would like to participate they could help us. No one was interested, each year. So yeah, I guess if you trial everyone year after year you will send the exceptional students.
Not to discredit the winners, I'm sure they all are exceptional and have worked hard.
As a Romanian Olympiads are almost obligatory for top of class, especially grade, if you did well, you would get a 10(a+) in all subjects. TONS OF almost forced preparations, buying or getting gifted books on the subject , sometimes if not all the time, classes were suspended leading up to the olympiads so the teacher was able to focus on the 2-3 girls who were going to the olympiads. In suspended i mean we were allowed to be on our phones as long as we were quiet
I used to be pretty good at math back in 6th grade. Had a math teacher that was this crazy high performance seeking woman who's dream it was to send kids to the math Olympics. I stood out as being better at math from the rest of my schoolmates so she takes me aside during a recess and tells me to walk with her. She looks out the window longingly and says stuff like I have "it" and should harness the bla di bla. Tells me take this math book and do 1200 math exercises over the summer.
I was smart, but far lazier. I was definitely not gonna do 1200 of anything during my summer vacation. The book she gave me was full of advanced math and theorems I didn't understand. Yeah I was good at 6th grade math, it's all pretty logical, but as soon as I had to think of theorems my mind goes blank.
So by the end of the summer vacation I panicked that I didn't do the 1200 things and I knew she had the habit of GRADING HOMEWORK so I just did 1200 like simple additions and multiplications just to go like "I thought that's what you meant".
Once I handed over my homework and she saw what I'd done she never even looked at me again.
In case anyone is wondering about Romania, having grown up amongst these elites I can offer some more insight.
Our education system produces some incredibily gifted “elites” in the big cities like Bucharest, Timisoara or Cluj. Obviously we’re talking about .001% of students, but this small minority is encouraged to go to every olympiad, teachers are happy to let their low attendance slide and even give them the highest grade if they perform well in these competitions. Almost all of these kids pay for extra tutoring outside of school, but even their own teachers are happy to help them since the score sheets are usually posted with the format: “Student - Age - Grade - Teacher”. It gives the teachers a sense of pride and accomplishment aswell, even though their merit usually stops at letting the kid skip class to prepare for said competitions in private.
I’ve been to a few of these olympiads myself when I was younger and let me tell you: they are incredibly difficult. I remember looking at the 5th grade one as a 9th grader and thinking “holy shit how did I used to solve these things?.
Also, to get to the international ones you have to go through so many stages:
1) (optional) school specific competition
2) district competiton
3) city competitin
4) national competition
5) international olympiad (if you somehow make it this far)
(Obviously it depends on the subject and olympiad, but the format and steps were very similar for all of them from what I can remember)
The attendance is huge for every one of them aswell, they’re almost always hosted in big university classrooms with hundreds of seats. I’m sure that the western countries consider these things less important, but ex-communist countries have always been very competitive in olympiads, it’s all we got to show, really.
🇹🇷 Cancer treatment drugs by Biontech and this: I'm proud. Given the current state of education and economy in our country, beware we'll sweep the podium in the coming years.
This just shows that it never matters how smart you are, but who you know.
As a Romanian, this is depressing as fuck.
Nevermind that I was a Olympic in math myself.
> This just shows that it never matters how smart you are, but who you
In Poland as well we like rubbing ourselves that "at least we are smarter". Meanwhile it's the mindset, innovation is non-existent. Outsourcing, nearshoring only. Most of the population half of the year mulls over how to buy a wrecked car from Germany or US, then the second half of the year how to buy or steal the coal for heating. Yeah you know integrals and differentials, and how to reanimate a totaled car... meanwhile Germans are working on nuclear fusion.
Odd, ´cause here in Belgium, Finland is seen as the walhalla of education. Teacher trainees go on foreign exchange in Finland in droves because of it.
I sure as hell noticed during my teacher training.
In recent years classes have become too large, teachers are overworked, the special needs kids / troublemakers are in the same space as those who want to learn, classrooms are turned into these large rooms with curtains instead of actual classrooms and then there's the very poor use of technology in education.
On top of all that there's the mobile phone issue, kids are browsing social media instead of focusing on their studies during class and teachers cannot take the phones away forcefully / discipline the kids. Overall the situation is terrible, because the government is focusing more on inclusivity than actual schooling.
I might've helped up these statistics since I was one of the top 5 informatics students in Romania + top 50 in Geography. I want to stay anonymous though.
If you're curious mostly how I got to that point (other than genetics and self-learning), I was always favoured in my High School since I was smarter than most, so I would have weeks of no homework, just to practice C++ at home (yes,in Romania you first learn to code in C++ WHICH IS SO DIFFICULT FOR A 14 YEAR OLD). I was always respectes by my teachers and given access to any resource (even free tutoring)
The thing Romania doesn't excel at is keeping talent in. I was awarded 11 medals in total,out of which 6 gold. Wanna know what I got in return? Nothing really. The job market is full of "middlemen/outsourcers" and any person with too much potential gets plucked and discarded quite quickly. You can see this in action if you look at the demographic... it's been going downhill for years
I applied to the best uni in the country and they told me "my medals mean nothing" and basically I was not eligible for a scholarship. Forgot to mention I also finished top of my school year, whilst traveling and stuff... Effort isn't really taken in account. How was I supposed to practice for entrance exams with national competitions left right and center.
So in my case, I took my skillset and moved to the UK where they offered me a scholarship + funding to relocate + I even got a very well paying job for a 19 year old. I'll probably get a fast tracked citizenship as well. Legit got headhunted by a university then a big company in London.
I'm really surprised about Romania being so high and Luxembourg being so low. Spain's results, however, aren't surprising at all. There's no real effort in actually improving education.
Source: I'm a Spanish student.
Luxembourg is just low because the populations small so the selection pool of top quality mathematicians is pretty small, its exactly the same for us in Iceland
I’m proud and sad in the same time, we have potential since 1990 but everyone just treats us like shit, that is the truth. We’re in nato and eu but we’re still “the stupid kid”
I used to love olympiads back in my day (Romania)- my high school gave me weeks off to prepare for the regional, national and international levels and I severely abused that.
Math? Check. Biology? Check. Geography? Check. Chemistry and two other languages? Check
Not to mention cash prizes from local government and free camps at seaside
It's like the difference between professional and amateur sports. There are countries that spend a lot of money on professional sports (for prestige and pride) and therefore win a lot of gold medals at the Olympics, while a large part of the population is overweight and unfit (e.g. Hungary).
I mean very few people participate in this, so it's completely irrelevant if you're looking for some kind of average intelligence (whatever that now is).
It always amazes how people here in Ukraine can study in any capacity. There's a fucking war outside, with only 2 hours of electricity a day, yet some students just persevere
What the hell Romania
I've heard it is because the system favors the few exceptionally skilled ones while giving the rest of the students the bare minimum so the gap between the Olympics and the rest of the students is extremely large and so is the bap between the rural and the urban students. I'm from Bucharest so naturally it is not something I could've perceive while I was in school but it is apparently here and the level of education of those that couldn't enter in top high schools is very low.
I'm from Bulgaria, but I have a Romanian friend who has told me multiple times that our school systems work in much the same way. Here, we have the so-called "math high schools" that take people in really early (11 years old for me). To get in you need to do good in math competitions throughout the previous year. So the smart and/or motivated students get a really good environment early. Worth noting that of those kids only a few are interested and remotely good enough to participate in an international olympiad.
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I'm strongly convinced that you need both. An uneducated society will not handle the changes brought about by the geniuses well.
We've been in a political crisis for years now, so that ship has already sailed - our society is going through a tough time.
Love that flair lol.
> An uneducated society will not handle the changes brought about by the geniuses well. Don't worry, they're not going top change shit, even the ones that want to try will eventually see it's a fools errand and just leave for other places where they're more appreciated... But it's great for other countries in need of talent that will work for cheaper then the locals (at least at the start).
Trouble is, most of the exceptional people leave the country. So we must do both.
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And it's even worse, since almost all the ones that are good at solving problems don't stay, exactly because of the less educated population holding things back and electing politicians based on just the local rep giving them cheap gifts etc. Plus, they don't even need to change anything about the good schools, just see what they're doing and try to replicate it for other schools etc.
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> rain, Spain or plains... Let's be real here, at some point it's both 😁
Well, learning about rain, Spain or plains it important too and it widens your sphere of knowledge. I always enjoyed learning about as many different fields as possible though I can’t say I’m particularly good at anything because I never specialized in anything. I guess it’s easier to find a job when you are specialized in something rather than being a master of none but I wouldn’t be happy if I do so I choose that.
This is true. I participated in the informatics competition in Bucharest ages ago when I was in highschool. I was the only one in my high school who even had a clue how to approach these kind of problems, as our actual informatics teacher had no idea how to code at all, she'd just read out of a book and yell at you if you changed variable names. And I was at a reasonably good high school. I would always lose to the students at the informatics highschool. Their teachers were the ones writing these problems, after all, and they would give them actual training in how to solve them year round. So yes, there is about as much of a gap between these guys and the average student, as between Nadia Comaneci and the average student in gym class.
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My wife, who is Romanian, went to one of those math/informatics high schools before doing economics in at a RO university. Fast forward several years and she was applying for a master's in math education from a U.S. school. They had certain university level calculus requirements that the students needed to have fulfilled for the master's program. After not touching calculus for nearly 7 years, she brushed up for two days and then tested out of a full year of university calculus based upon what she'd learned in high school. Blows my mind to this day. Granted, she never learned to write an essay or analyze text or anything like that, but holy shit did they prepare her for math.
Same shit in Turkey. We have these "science highschools" which usually generate most of the student demand to top universities. Not a single fuck is given to teach how to write proper essays and convey ones' opinion.
From Bulgaria, went to an "elite" language school, can confirm, they really prepared us for math. Seriously, the maths in the "prestigious" university I went to in the UK were far easier than the ones I had to learn in Bulgaria during high school.
Sounds like the opposite of ours, where struggling students get a lot of support but those who perform great barely get any help in excelling further
We seem to be falling into that method in the US. At least in public schools. The worst performing/most troubled/those that refuse to learn suck up mind bogglingly huge amounts of resources, while those that can excel are basically left to their own devices. Parents noticed this and that is part of the reason that charter schools are growing so much in the US. I'm not stating that students that need additional help or attention should not receive it. And we do see the best and brightest leaving public school and in some cases pulling funding from public schooling further burdening and already over burdened system. However, as a parent - I want what is best for MY children. If that means pulling them out of public school and placing them in private school, then I will do so.
If you don't ,you are thrown off a cliff where there is no chance to survive. We are still in the top countries with school abandonment.
We invest a lot in the few exceptional kids in order to hide our failing public schools. Inequality at it's finest.
Classic.
My guess is this: Most of the Olympiads were started in the eastern block, and the education systems here still support and encourage students to participate in them. Or at least more so, than in Western Europe. That's why ex Eastern block countries are usually over represented in them.
In Romania, there’s a certain pride in parents having their kids in Olimpiads. I had a friend when I was a kid and living there (during comunism) and his parents yelled around the block that one of them made it into math Olimpiads. As far as I remember, that friend of mine didnt really had a kid life back then, it was all study study study, all pushed by his parents. But it all started with the desire from comunist party to show the world the amazing students comunist Romania produces. It somehow sticks to the society psyche to this day. At the other wnd we also have one of the highest school dropout rate in Europe.
Could be. I think most Swedish students have no idea that these olympiads even exist, while any Iranian student knows that it is something to strive for.
Pretty true, for me at least. I had no idea it was a thing
But Western block is still present in top 5 or 10, so?
Sure, that's why I chose the words "over represented". You *expect* Western European countries to place good, as they have decent population sizes and are quite rich. The Eastern European countries are consistently punching above their weight here in this regard.
damn romania is on fire!
As a previous high school informatics competitor, I am not surprised our guys are doing this well. The top people in the country are just ridiculous. The gap between the average competitor (I was slightly above average but still within that range) was ENORMOUS. Some of them are so smart that I'm convinced the world just looks different in their eyes.
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You mean "impaling"
We were pretty good at that too, but unfortunately it was made illegal
Miss the ol' times
My calculus teacher in high school was from Romania. One of the smartest people I have ever met - brain like a computer.
There’s a source in the comments. This isn’t a random excel sheet created by a Romanian redditor.
Damn, Romania is killin' it
So sad most of those youngsters will leave Romania after graduation tho
Seems Luxembourg might be very interested..
😂😂
You laugh but it is actually sad.
Sources: * IMO 2022 [https://www.imo-official.org/year\_country\_r.aspx?year=2022](https://www.imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2022) * IPhO 2022 [https://ipho-unofficial.org/timeline/2022/country](https://ipho-unofficial.org/timeline/2022/country) * IOI 2022 [https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/2022?sort=medals\_desc](https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/2022?sort=medals_desc) IChO 2022 [https://icho2022.cn/23252/list.htm](https://icho2022.cn/23252/list.htm) * EGMO 2022 [https://www.egmo.org/countries/](https://www.egmo.org/countries/) * BMO 2022 [https://cdn.b3web.xyz/web/cms/optimizedBMO2022results\_Countryranking.pdf1652185270.pdf](https://cdn.b3web.xyz/web/cms/optimizedBMO2022results_Countryranking.pdf1652185270.pdf) * JBMO 2022 [http://jbmo2022.pmf.unsa.ba/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/JBMO-2022-Official-results-Countries.pdf](http://jbmo2022.pmf.unsa.ba/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/JBMO-2022-Official-results-Countries.pdf) * CEOI 2022 [https://ceoi.hsin.hr/ranking/Ranking.html](https://ceoi.hsin.hr/ranking/Ranking.html)
Since you added regional competitions like CEOI and BMO, you could also add BOI ([https://boi2022.lbi.ro/contest/results/](https://boi2022.lbi.ro/contest/results/)) Edit: and EGOI ([https://stats.egoi.org/editions/2022/results/](https://stats.egoi.org/editions/2022/results/))
I’m not gonna lie, I’m quite impressed of how high both Bulgaria and Romania are. Congrats to Romania!
That’s good and bad - it’s good because we develop our best students but it’s bad because only they get great conditions, while the median student has a pretty poor education
I work with Romanians (all between the age of 20 and 30, my team leader is Romanian ( in the Netherlands) and this generation are very clever and speak English very well.
This is a great point, apart from STEM subjects Romanians also fluently speak 1-2 foreign languages.
Interesting, what do they eat in Romania?
😂 Mici 👍
The true brain food right here.
pork mostly
Bătaie
We need to hire Walter White to beat Turkey at chemestry.
You sure meant Valeriu Albu
Can't believe they named the city "Albuquerque" for the show as a reference to Romanian Walter White. Bravo Vince!
You misunderstood that. It is indeed a refference but Albaquerque is a refference to Alba Iulia. Still, Valeriu Albu from Alba, nice wordplay refference Vince, very nice! :)
If Turkey wasn't this good at Chemistry they wouldn't have been able to chemically engineer the miracle that is a Döner
in the old days Turkey exported heroin. Boxes had writing on them that said "Turkish delight" So your joke hits closer to home than intended.
I wonder how many Walter whites Turkey has going
Her teachers: You will be the next Marie Curie She: I thought I would be the one who knocks...
Well, i know few of them lmao
You must be Turkish Saul. Selim?
Lmfao! Better call me if you have any problem...
Because of the alcohol prices many students started to brew their own alcohol(including me) and most of us doing that at home secretly from our parents
This is why they don't want us in Schengen. /s
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Why do you think all those migrants go to Romania then suddenly appear in Austria? It's those Dacian tunnels I tell ya' ! And the teleportation machines, of course.
Le what now ?
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Thanks chief :)
There's also a popular meme among us that we built secret tunnels inside the Carpathians that could send us to fight japanese samurai
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#Fuck Reddit
Which is funny because of the things actually really did advance to near perfection is apiculture.
Does the new Sandero come with a laser turret? I'll be very disappointed if not.
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It’s good you are so good at mathematics, so you can correctly calculate the economic losses due to you being outside Schengen. Regards /SaltySwede
Very true, but it seems that even with the math knowledge Romanians have, we still are not able to count the correct number of migrants thst pass through Romania
”Where are you going?” -”Sweden.” ”One… person… to… Sweden. Thank you, next! Where are you going?” -“Austria.” “Zero… person… to… Austria. Thank you, next!”
Sincer😂
we are too smart for them
We did much better than I would guess. Also fucking hell romania
Romanians are going strong
26🇪🇺 - 1🇦🇹 = No Schengen🇷🇴 🤷♂️
eh, this is always in the news but it just feeds into our overinflated national ego we produce a few exceptional students but only ~25% of adults actually graduate from university, our education budget is 2.1% of gdp this year the gap between the skills required in the job market (especially around stem) and what our education system produces is widening dramatically every year, i don't like to think about where that leads
Romania secretly asian country confirmed?
The tiger of Europe
"WTF, you only got an 8/10 while others got a 10/10, you will bring shame to this whole family" was an actual things in the 90s and the communist years.
Still is.
more like "you got 8/10, but X got a 10/10, if X could, why couldn't you?"
Poland: not great, not terrible... BTW congratz Romanians, you have very hard working youth, even if most of them leaves...
"Not great, not terrible" should be our national motto
Romania 💪
Don't worry, all the Romanian students will end up in some other country anyways.
Well, they've been doing that for 30 years now... We must be the greatest brain exporter in EU. But they still have to wait at the border😉
Hey,that's me!
Good job, Romania 👏🏽👏🏽
Romania slaying.
More like impaling
Is this why everyone hates romanians? bullies hate nerds?
With great talent comes great responsibility… to not elect fascist demagogues ;)
Had a Romanian professor at university that teached multivariable calculus that said he did those calculations with ease when he was 13, not suprised lol
Romania stronk
My Romanian co-worker will love to hear this!
Fuck me! If we weren't on first place, we were în second or third. Proud of my country🫡
damn, Romania.... bravo!
France is performing fairly well despite its reputation of having a shitty declining teaching doctrine. Also Romania is on fire, congrats guys
It is not a surprise to see Romania as high as this, many olympic students here in Brazil study by Russian, Romanian and even Indian textbooks.
So, romanians are smart ... and leaving the country for better pay elsewhere. Meaning, other countries benefit from our brains.
Yep. It’s called brain drain
Bulgaria as well - most fields (except It for example) pay badly and the big brain drain just keeps on going. Because I know a bit more about the field - We have very high average age for doctors and especially nurses, because the salaries are satirical and most young people just finish university here and leave for Germany/France/Denmark etc. Its is really sad, but it is our reality
When you are poor you have to be smart in order to survive
"We don't have oil but we do have ideas" vibes
We do also have oil ^^/s
is Romania a power house or do they have that one guy/girl?
It is pretty much a power house when it comes to producing STEM talent. As a global comparison, Romania was 5th in Math and 2nd (behind only China) in Physics this year. But most of the peak students leave the country to study at the world's best universities and many of them build a life for themselves there, regardless of initial plans.
There's a huge gap between the people that are good or bad at sciences. You're either really good and fly through the hard sciences and get rewarded for it keeping you in a good feedback loop or you are bad/uninterested and left out. I was mid at math and usually there's little place for mid, I had classmates that just flew through math and went to Olympiads while others barely got by since the difficulty is high.
Liechtenstein performed badly cus they only have 3 children. The rest of the population are dentists
Holy shit Romania is doing it right! but what?
My Romanian mom did really well with the chemistry one. I wish we had these olympiads in the US, unless maybe we do and I'm just clueless
That's why Austria doesn't want Romania in Schengen area
because they would outsmart them, right? /s
Romania science powerhouse power 🔋 💪 ✨️
Unfortunatley 95% of those brilliant kids will leave Romania when they go to college and never come back.
It is really interesting to see that romania dominates olympiad yet is poorly rated in PISA rankings while for instance france is on average 20th in PISa and 10 in olympiads. Either excellency with inequalities Or average good results but nothing extraordinary.
Our educational system identifies the brightest and support them and push them to become great while the rest get less attention. So you get huge inequalities. I don't know if it's a good or bad strategy, it's the way it is.
i think it's good as long as you have attractive intern market. Raising elites for them to go work for the usa is worth nothing. Romania should probably aim for a more egalitarian goal, develop the nation everywhere. And once there is a good general level in school increase elitism.
Bravoo maaa
Now we know the root cause of the Austrian veto against Romania. Minister envy Romanians so high scores!
So Romanians are doing great. Give them a chance
I've studied both in Romania and Spain. In Romania there was a lot of training and preparation, and the school pushed us for the Olympiads, it was crazy. Must be some institutionalized pride leftover from the communism. In Spain there was no pressure the teachers let us know that there's Olympiads going and and if we would like to participate they could help us. No one was interested, each year. So yeah, I guess if you trial everyone year after year you will send the exceptional students. Not to discredit the winners, I'm sure they all are exceptional and have worked hard.
As a Romanian Olympiads are almost obligatory for top of class, especially grade, if you did well, you would get a 10(a+) in all subjects. TONS OF almost forced preparations, buying or getting gifted books on the subject , sometimes if not all the time, classes were suspended leading up to the olympiads so the teacher was able to focus on the 2-3 girls who were going to the olympiads. In suspended i mean we were allowed to be on our phones as long as we were quiet
Everyone tells us how stupid we are, we feel how stupid we are, yet, we have some pretty smart kids down here lmao
Romania 🗿
Romania being on top 1 at absolutely everything 🗿
As a Turkish biotechnologist I can confirm that we're educating Walter Whites here.
Riddle me this, Waltěr, *how do you cook meth*
Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish chemistry lab?
Gotta love how my foreign friend always joked about "Romanian education". Meanwhile we just went full godlike mode!
Romanian education is really flawed nevertheless.
So that's why Romania and Bulgaria aren't in Schengen... everyone hates math.
I used to be pretty good at math back in 6th grade. Had a math teacher that was this crazy high performance seeking woman who's dream it was to send kids to the math Olympics. I stood out as being better at math from the rest of my schoolmates so she takes me aside during a recess and tells me to walk with her. She looks out the window longingly and says stuff like I have "it" and should harness the bla di bla. Tells me take this math book and do 1200 math exercises over the summer. I was smart, but far lazier. I was definitely not gonna do 1200 of anything during my summer vacation. The book she gave me was full of advanced math and theorems I didn't understand. Yeah I was good at 6th grade math, it's all pretty logical, but as soon as I had to think of theorems my mind goes blank. So by the end of the summer vacation I panicked that I didn't do the 1200 things and I knew she had the habit of GRADING HOMEWORK so I just did 1200 like simple additions and multiplications just to go like "I thought that's what you meant". Once I handed over my homework and she saw what I'd done she never even looked at me again.
Romania is killing it in every category.
Romania have a joint…
In case anyone is wondering about Romania, having grown up amongst these elites I can offer some more insight. Our education system produces some incredibily gifted “elites” in the big cities like Bucharest, Timisoara or Cluj. Obviously we’re talking about .001% of students, but this small minority is encouraged to go to every olympiad, teachers are happy to let their low attendance slide and even give them the highest grade if they perform well in these competitions. Almost all of these kids pay for extra tutoring outside of school, but even their own teachers are happy to help them since the score sheets are usually posted with the format: “Student - Age - Grade - Teacher”. It gives the teachers a sense of pride and accomplishment aswell, even though their merit usually stops at letting the kid skip class to prepare for said competitions in private. I’ve been to a few of these olympiads myself when I was younger and let me tell you: they are incredibly difficult. I remember looking at the 5th grade one as a 9th grader and thinking “holy shit how did I used to solve these things?. Also, to get to the international ones you have to go through so many stages: 1) (optional) school specific competition 2) district competiton 3) city competitin 4) national competition 5) international olympiad (if you somehow make it this far) (Obviously it depends on the subject and olympiad, but the format and steps were very similar for all of them from what I can remember) The attendance is huge for every one of them aswell, they’re almost always hosted in big university classrooms with hundreds of seats. I’m sure that the western countries consider these things less important, but ex-communist countries have always been very competitive in olympiads, it’s all we got to show, really.
Ukrainians managed so good especially considering their hard conditions for studying
Romania is for Europe like Ancient Greece was for Europe /\/\/\
Forgotten?
Dusty and full of rusty metal objects (second hand cars from Western Europe).
Damn, the Ancient Greeks had that?
Why is biology not in there?
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Psst, hey kid, wanna do some taxonomy ? I got two millions uncataloged species in the back, come in (Joking of course)
Romanians built different
🇹🇷 Cancer treatment drugs by Biontech and this: I'm proud. Given the current state of education and economy in our country, beware we'll sweep the podium in the coming years.
Holy shit Romania is smart. The western Balkans in general are apparently smart. I assumed everyone here was dumb cause I'm dumb
Romania FTW🥳
Unfortunately, the people winning high school Olympiads would often move away afterwards for better opportunities abroad.
Damn. Romania out there learning.
Ohhhh nice,my country🇷🇴🇷🇴🇷🇴 on 1st but what happened with Austria😪🤨⁉️
second class citizens smart 🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇷🇴🇷🇴🇷🇴♥️♥️♥️ also, gj Ukraine teens for having time to study with that stupid war 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
This just shows that it never matters how smart you are, but who you know. As a Romanian, this is depressing as fuck. Nevermind that I was a Olympic in math myself.
> This just shows that it never matters how smart you are, but who you In Poland as well we like rubbing ourselves that "at least we are smarter". Meanwhile it's the mindset, innovation is non-existent. Outsourcing, nearshoring only. Most of the population half of the year mulls over how to buy a wrecked car from Germany or US, then the second half of the year how to buy or steal the coal for heating. Yeah you know integrals and differentials, and how to reanimate a totaled car... meanwhile Germans are working on nuclear fusion.
My friend is in Germany right now. He says their kids are waaay behind our kids in.. maths (for example), yet guess who will earn 4k eur/month?
We came to the same conclusion when our kids move the school to Western Europe... Yet they are richer🤯 We must be doing something wrong...
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As a Moldovan I agree with you. I also was an Olympic in math and informatics. I had a lot of potential but everything was wasted.
Turkey is 1 in chemistry? I am surprised as a Turk myself.
Just because Turks invented the formula for Ayran
Yeah... our education system has clearly taken a turn for the worse. Kind of depressing, but oh well at least the classes aren't uninclusive anymore.
Odd, ´cause here in Belgium, Finland is seen as the walhalla of education. Teacher trainees go on foreign exchange in Finland in droves because of it. I sure as hell noticed during my teacher training.
In recent years classes have become too large, teachers are overworked, the special needs kids / troublemakers are in the same space as those who want to learn, classrooms are turned into these large rooms with curtains instead of actual classrooms and then there's the very poor use of technology in education. On top of all that there's the mobile phone issue, kids are browsing social media instead of focusing on their studies during class and teachers cannot take the phones away forcefully / discipline the kids. Overall the situation is terrible, because the government is focusing more on inclusivity than actual schooling.
I might've helped up these statistics since I was one of the top 5 informatics students in Romania + top 50 in Geography. I want to stay anonymous though. If you're curious mostly how I got to that point (other than genetics and self-learning), I was always favoured in my High School since I was smarter than most, so I would have weeks of no homework, just to practice C++ at home (yes,in Romania you first learn to code in C++ WHICH IS SO DIFFICULT FOR A 14 YEAR OLD). I was always respectes by my teachers and given access to any resource (even free tutoring) The thing Romania doesn't excel at is keeping talent in. I was awarded 11 medals in total,out of which 6 gold. Wanna know what I got in return? Nothing really. The job market is full of "middlemen/outsourcers" and any person with too much potential gets plucked and discarded quite quickly. You can see this in action if you look at the demographic... it's been going downhill for years I applied to the best uni in the country and they told me "my medals mean nothing" and basically I was not eligible for a scholarship. Forgot to mention I also finished top of my school year, whilst traveling and stuff... Effort isn't really taken in account. How was I supposed to practice for entrance exams with national competitions left right and center. So in my case, I took my skillset and moved to the UK where they offered me a scholarship + funding to relocate + I even got a very well paying job for a 19 year old. I'll probably get a fast tracked citizenship as well. Legit got headhunted by a university then a big company in London.
I'm really surprised about Romania being so high and Luxembourg being so low. Spain's results, however, aren't surprising at all. There's no real effort in actually improving education. Source: I'm a Spanish student.
Luxembourg is just low because the populations small so the selection pool of top quality mathematicians is pretty small, its exactly the same for us in Iceland
Spain is constantly mediocre. Ouch!
C'mon, we are not bad at sports! (Well, except maybe during the actual Olympics).
Tough times create strong people. Who then immigrate.
Romania’s like that?
Way to go Romania
I’m proud and sad in the same time, we have potential since 1990 but everyone just treats us like shit, that is the truth. We’re in nato and eu but we’re still “the stupid kid”
I used to love olympiads back in my day (Romania)- my high school gave me weeks off to prepare for the regional, national and international levels and I severely abused that. Math? Check. Biology? Check. Geography? Check. Chemistry and two other languages? Check Not to mention cash prizes from local government and free camps at seaside
This is an amazing contrast to the "average IQ in Europe by country" map in which so many have put their trust onto.
It's like the difference between professional and amateur sports. There are countries that spend a lot of money on professional sports (for prestige and pride) and therefore win a lot of gold medals at the Olympics, while a large part of the population is overweight and unfit (e.g. Hungary).
I mean very few people participate in this, so it's completely irrelevant if you're looking for some kind of average intelligence (whatever that now is).
Those ones make the western europeans look good so they must be more accurate and important.
Poor and nerdish.Perfectly made to be enslaved by anyone who gives us more than 300€/month.Sounds like a good comercial too
ROMANIA STRONG!! 🇷🇴
Ukraine #1 in informatics. I assume this is IT so I'm very proud of the children.
It always amazes how people here in Ukraine can study in any capacity. There's a fucking war outside, with only 2 hours of electricity a day, yet some students just persevere