What Academic Excellence Actually Measures

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, May 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- About the Author: Mr. Marco Longmore is Head of School at the International School Ho Chi Minh City (ISHCMC), one of Vietnam's leading international schools offering the full IB continuum from Early Years to Grade 12. ISHCMC has served the international community of Ho Chi Minh City for more than 30 years.

Perhaps the most important question a parent can ask is 'How do I know if my child is getting an excellent education?' Most parents expect metrics like IB scores or university destinations, yet these represent only part of the story.

At ISHCMC, excellence is not measured by test scores alone, but by the transformative impact we have on young minds and futures. Our evidence speaks clearly: an average IB Diploma score of 34 (versus 30 globally), 100% university placement with 98% achieving their first-choice institutions, and a 57% bilingual diploma rate compared to 23% worldwide. Yet these metrics are the visible surface of something much deeper than the result of an education concerned with who a student is becoming as well as the academic score they are achieving.

Consider one of our current Grade 11 students, Huan-Ming Chang, who has just been selected as a Global Finalist for the 2026 GENIUS Olympiad. Out of thousands of submissions worldwide, his project advanced to the final stage at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. What strikes me about his story is not the competition selection itself. It is the intellectual journey: the research questions he refined, the environmental challenges he grappled with, the growing confidence in his own voice as a problem-solver.

At ISHCMC, we track learning capacity—the ability of a student not just to perform on a given test, but to grow, adapt, and sustain intellectual curiosity over time. We explicitly develop and assess learning dispositions: curiosity, resilience, collaboration, and ethical reasoning. With 95+ student activities, we create a structured space for these dispositions to develop by design.

The IB score matters. But it matters most as evidence of something deeper: a young person who has learned how to learn, who knows who they are, and who is ready to shape their future with confidence and purpose. Excellence at ISHCMC is not an outcome we chase. It is a standard we hold—one that transcends rankings and extends into the character, resilience, and purpose our students carry into the world.

SOURCE International School Ho Chi Minh City (ISHCMC)