From C Student to 99.45 ATAR: The Complete Transformation

Hi! I'm Spiros, founder of Student Evolution and a recent graduate of Bond University, having studied Entrepreneurial Transformation with my specialist stream in Artificial Intelligence. I went from being a C student to graduating with an ATAR of 99.45.

In this article, I'd like to share my personal academic journey with you and why Student Evolution was created so you can be more connected with the program. So if that sounds awesome and you're excited, sit back and relax -- we have a story ahead of us.

Lost -> Trying Harder

In Year 7, I was a C student. I didn't know what I needed to do or where to start. I felt lost and scared. All I knew was I had to evolve, I had to try something.

In Year 8, I began pushing as hard as I could, spending most of my time just studying; I'd be in the school library until 8:30pm most weekdays. Studying harder did help push my grades up, but there was this grade barrier I just kept hitting. There were questions in my exams like in Math that I just couldn't answer. It didn't matter if you did all the practice sheets.

Studying Harder -> Studying Smarter

The focus wasn't studying harder, it was studying smarter. I listened to my teachers fully, I did all the assigned work, but it wasn't enough. More had to be done...I had to become more. This is where a turning point occurred. I began spending hours every day researching learning and studying techniques to then try them out until I found what worked.

From these thousands of hours of research and practice, I developed a schema for myself on how to learn, how to teach myself, and how to study efficiently. No longer did I need to learn in class, I taught myself. No longer did I need practice exams, I found hundreds myself. No longer did I need content, I collated textbooks and videos to walk me through everything.

When You Start Achieving, You Become Obsessed

When I began to teach myself and I saw improvement in my results, a switch just flipped in me...learning became an obsession. Every weekday, on the weekend, on the holidays, I needed more. Now you might be reading this thinking "yeah this kid just had a lot of innate drive, this doesn't apply to me." If that's the case you'd be wrong.

When I achieved my first report card with a few A-'s, I realised I wanted to do medicine and I could get in if I made it my goal and applied myself. That goal and the little bit of success I had drove me.

When you experience that positive feedback loop, it changes everything. When you start to see an improvement in your grades, you get excited and want to try harder. It's the same when you don't achieve the grades you want, you feel a bit defeated and don't try as hard. Students need to make sure they're on a positive feedback loop, not a negative one.

Year 12 Arrives

Year 12 arrived. The entire year was an endless dance, a climb, not a test of a subject, but a test of my abilities. Every day, I stuck to the plan, and made sacrifices to spend all my time studying or playing a bit of tennis.

While I saw people partying in their Instagram stories, I was studying because I knew what I would achieve would be worth it. I knew I could achieve more than I ever thought possible of myself.

I had to prove it to myself, I needed to in my life, to not waste my potential. And then I did. I achieved an ATAR of 99.45, which put me in the top 0.5% of students in the state (the top half percent). I graduated as the Dux of my school and, though I'd originally set out to do medicine, after acceptance I realised through my own self-research that tech was my true passion, so I made the switch to AI.

Students Aren't Evolving

During my degree, I began tutoring a bunch of students, and I kept seeing them make the same mistakes I did in school. There was a shocking truth: Every single year, every new wave of Year 12 students, they are not learning from the mistakes of the previous year. They are not better students. Students are not evolving.

Why is there nothing to make students stronger independent learners? Why don't schools teach us how to learn -- even if some schools allegedly "talk" about it? The schema that I had used to evolve myself from C grades to straight A+'s had something there, something for more than just myself.

So I modified the schema to turn it into a personalised version for each of the students I was tutoring to apply, and they all started to improve. Eventually, I was relieved because I was finally able to step back as a tutor and was blessed to see them grow.

They started to become strong, independent learners for themselves! That thought, that recognition of a serious problem, sparked the idea of Student Evolution.

Building Student Evolution

The question was: how can I help as many students as possible? After all, no one can be everywhere at once. During my two-year degree, I sacrificed all my free time to build a comprehensive program to guide students through the schema so that they can learn how to learn and how to teach themselves.

It didn't stop there though. During my degree, I completed seven placements and my Machine Learning Specialisation from Stanford; I wanted to share what I'd learned about perspective, so that was put in there too.

What Learning Should Be

The growth of Student Evolution has been incredible in its impact to help students become more, to evolve into the students they can be. To see the shift in their mentalities, their behaviour, to dissolve their limiting beliefs, to make them aware of things they never even considered. That is what education should be. We should be building stronger, independent learners, not blindly throwing content at them.

After researching and working in AI for some time, I've realised most people don't know how fast the industry is moving. Technological development across so many different fields has accelerated beyond comprehension. If we do not become strong, independent learners, we will fall behind. That is why the mission of Student Evolution is to evolve students.

Thank you for reading all of this; you sticking through it because of your curiosity being sparked shows your incredible potential for learning and grit. We look forward to seeing you inside the program. Have a great week!