Baccademia: the baccalaureate exam for everybody

The baccalaureate exam made easy

Eugen Nasta, 24.09.2024, 14:00

The 2024 session of the baccalaureate exam in Romania has seen the highest promotion rate in the last decade, accounting for 76.4%. Notwithstanding, the maturity exam has been frightening for many of the candidates. Reason enough for a couple of students in Cluj, central Transylvania, to have an initiative meant to make the experience easier for those colleagues who were lass lucky. The students successfully passed the baccalaureate exam with high grades and started Baccademia, a project that seeks to help candidates pass the baccalaureate exam with no trouble at all.

Bianca Ionescu is the founder of the Baccademia project. Here is what she told us:

“Our story actually began as early as 2022. That year I passed the baccalaureate exam, with a 10 in History and a 9.80 grade in the Romanian Language and literature test. Even though I competed in the National Romanian Language and Literature Olympiad ever since secondary school and I still competed all throughout the high school years, I was still stressed out as a 12th-grade, senior high-school pupil since the baccalaureate exam was drawing near. And then, having taken the exam, I opted for digitizing the materials I myself had been structuring.

It took me a good six months to structure the subject matters all by myself. In 2022 I started helping pupils online. I shared those materials, free of charge, on an Instagram account and practically the generation that passed the exam in 2023 was the first one I helped. And then the idea of Baccademia began to take shape only when the pupils sent me their Baccalaureate exam grades. For instance, of the roughly 3,000 pupils I helped, most of them passed the exam with a grade above 9.50. Some of them even got a neat 10. There even were people who got very high grades having sat in for the exam 10 or 20 years later in life! And, practically, that very moment I realized my materials did have a positive impact on them.”

Bianca Ionescu has been a high-school student until recently. Here is what she went on to say:

“Pupils got fed up with bulky books, with a typical black-and-white print and full of details that were not required for the baccalaureate exam, and I could understand their frustration since I had been there before. We’re in a country where we can nonetheless see the situation ahead of the exams did not change that much, it does not improve as against the previous years. 10 months have passed since I founded Baccademia and we make the difference, somehow, as our team is only made of students who got a 10 in the baccalaureate exam or in some of the subject matters. And, also, all our collections are coloured and synthetic. It also includes, for instance, pieces of advice, solved tests or jokes, sometimes, jokes today’s generation is sure to understand very clearly. “

Irina Selagea is the author of the Geography handbook. Also, she is responsible for the interactive videos on the social media. I asked her what Baccademia was, for her:

“I am the kind of person who likes to help and I am keen on bringing in a new perspective when it comes to learning for the baccalaureate exam, since most of the people think it is just a test for which you only have to swot. But I should like to come up with the idea and the solution that any baccalaureate test could be passed with flying colours only though understanding, through jokes and in a much funnier way, rather than resorting to pricey materials or to very long materials. I have come up with the solution for the Generation Z pupils, who somehow have a different understanding of how to learn for certain subject matters. And I just wanted to bring in a new version, in a bid to motivate pupils, perhaps to read Romanian literature in an off-the-beaten-track way “.

In terms of feedback, the Baccademia team has told us several pupils confessed that with the help of these materials, they could memorize the entire content of a subject matter that was taught in one class, in one minute

As for the team, they continue their work! Bianca Ionescu:

We’re still in short supply of the IT, Chemistry and Physics exercise books, and that’s what we’re working won at the moment. They will be brought out sometime in September, in mid-month, we hope. Our success, to a great extent, is provided by the Tik Tok platform. It is there that we’ve gained our popularity with the clips we created using AI, for instance. We’ve so far gathered 1,000,000 views all told, in our account. “

We can only wish candidates to be efficient in their learning efforts, now that everything has become easier for them.