Sunway College’s AUSMAT students top the charts of BEWA and WACE

Three Australian Matriculation Programme (AUSMAT) students from Sunway College have proven to possess strong business acumen as Khoo Yu Wen, Lee Chia Ying, Leong Wei-Xiang and Yap Yi Shin obtained distinction in the 2014 Business Educators of Western Australia (BEWA) Accounting competition. Yap came second highest in the world ranking, placing her at the forefront of the competition.

BEWA Accounting competition is an examination based competition designed to help students revise their accounting subject of the Western Australian Certificate of Education (WACE) examinations, the set of final examinations for AUSMAT students whereby its qualification is equivalent to Australian Year 12, pre-university level. The results of the competition highlight areas in the subject that require students’ extra focus and attention.

The BEWA Accounting Competition winners with Cheng Mien Wee, Executive Director of Sunway International School and Director of Pre-University Studies and Prof Graeme Wilkinson, Vice-Chancellor of Sunway University.
From left: Leong Wei-Xiang, Yap Yi Shin, Cheng Mien Wee, Prof Graeme Wilkinson, Khoo Yu Wen and Lee Chia Ying

“The format of the competition is exactly the same as our exams, which is two and a half hours with three sections – multiple choice questions, short answers and essays,” said Yap. “I am surprised I got a distinction and being ranked second in the world. The key for me in achieving this is that I kept doing past exam papers. So preparing for the competition is similar to how I prepare for the final WACE examinations.”

Both Khoo and Leong added that their helpful AUSMAT lecturers, in particular Jason Soh Chiaw Ker, and Sunway College’s facilities contributed towards conducive learning and thus achieving their distinctions. They never did last-minute preparations for the BEWA competition and throughout their studies, instead they were shaped and motivated to constantly revise what they have learnt, which greatly helped them in mastering their subjects, thereby obtaining distinctions in the competition.

“The AUSMAT programme is a pre-university programme with all round development of a student as it really helps students like myself to learn all subjects in-depth. For our Accounting subject, besides textbook learning, we participated in a field trip to Bank Negara, where we get to visit the coin museum and know more about currency. Participation in the I-care day, a fund raising event, allowed us to learn sales and its relations to accounting, where knowledge of cost, profit and volume are applied,” said Khoo.

In the recent release of Australian Matriculation results, 122 Sunway College AUSMAT students achieved Australian Tertiary Admission Rank ATAR 90 and above; 56 percent of this class of 2014 achieved ATAR 80 and above. This means that more than half of Sunway College AUSMAT students are in the top 20 percentile of graduating Australian secondary school students and 98 percent of them are eligible to enter some of the best universities worldwide.