Looking back, dated the day after the certificate.
335 points: what the MINT-EC certificate actually counts
With my Abitur I received the MINT-EC certificate with distinction. It is less an award than a ledger of my school years: competitions, camps and extra lessons.
On 6 June 2024 I got a certificate that mostly consists of a table. I like it for exactly that reason.
MINT-EC is a national network of schools with a strong STEM profile. MINT is the German word for STEM. At the end of school the network issues a certificate that sums up what a student did in these subjects beyond the normal lessons. It has three areas, each with three levels. “With distinction” means the top level in all three.
The first area is grades: physics as an advanced course, chemistry, and the combined maths and computer science subject, 13.25 out of 15 points on average.
The second is scientific work. Mine was a computer science project on neural networks, built around a program that recognises handwritten characters. It was graded 14 out of 15, and it was the first neural network I built myself.
The third area is the table. Every activity outside class has a point value, and the top level starts at 80 points. I had 335.
The number is not one big thing. It is many small ones: three years of the Bundeswettbewerb Informatik, two state rounds of the physics olympiad, computer science camps, the excellence programme in computer science at my school, the team competition in Jena, the maths olympiad years earlier, and 15 points for qualifying for the national final of Jugend forscht.
Reading the list, I notice two things. Most entries are computer science. And almost none of them was a single big effort. They are weekends, homework rounds and camps, added up over the years.
Eight days later I got my Abitur certificate.