Over the past two years of tutoring and trial lessons, I have actually advised quite a few students not to prepare for competitions such as the UK Chemistry Olympiad (UKChO) or the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge (C3L6).

Some parents are understandably confused by this.

“If we are willing to invest the time and pay for tutoring, why not just let our child give it a try?”

 

My answer has always been fairly simple:

Academic competitions are neither a rescue plan for university applications nor a shortcut to making an application look impressive.

When students enter competitions purely because of application anxiety or because everyone else seems to be doing the same thing, the result can easily be counterproductive. Instead of strengthening an application, competition preparation may consume large amounts of time that should have been spent securing strong academic performance at school.

1. Which students do I usually advise against competition preparation?

Students whose core chemistry is not yet secure

I sometimes meet students who are still achieving around a B or below in GCSE or Year 12 A-Level Chemistry, but are already thinking about preparing for the UKChO.

The real difficulty of competitions such as UKChO and C3L6 is not simply that they contain “more advanced knowledge”.

These papers often introduce unfamiliar chemistry through background information, data and guided reasoning, and then ask students to apply ideas they have just encountered.

What they are really testing is whether you can:

use a strong foundation in familiar chemistry to reason through an unfamiliar problem.

If fundamental topics such as equilibria, thermodynamics, organic mechanisms and stereochemistry are still difficult, jumping directly into long competition problems can be extremely frustrating.

At that stage, strengthening A-Level Chemistry is usually a much better investment than immediately trying to win an Olympiad award.

Students who are participating mainly because their parents want them to

Another common situation is when the student has very little interest in competitions, but their parents believe that:

“Everyone else is entering these competitions, so my child should as well.”

I tend to be cautious in these cases.

Competition chemistry requires a considerable amount of work outside the classroom. Students need to read long problems, absorb unfamiliar concepts, analyse mechanisms and sometimes spend a very long time understanding a single question.

Without genuine curiosity, the entire process can easily become mechanical exam training.

It is certainly possible to improve scores through practice. However, if the only motivation is collecting an award for an application, much of the longer-term academic value of the competition is lost.

2. Understand the admissions logic: school performance comes first

Whether you are applying to Oxford, Cambridge, other highly selective UK universities, or competitive US universities, chemistry competitions are best viewed as:

evidence of academic curiosity and the ability to explore chemistry beyond the school curriculum.

They are not a substitute for strong academic performance.

Your academic record is still the foundation

If a student is not yet consistently performing at A/A* level in A-Level Chemistry, spending a disproportionate amount of time chasing a competition award is usually not the first priority.

A competition result can make an already strong academic profile more distinctive.

It cannot reliably compensate for weak underlying academic performance.

Competitions should be a natural extension of your interest

The ideal time to start competition chemistry is when the school curriculum already feels relatively comfortable, and you begin wanting to know more than the textbook tells you.

You might start asking questions such as:

  • Why does this reaction proceed through this mechanism?

  • Could another mechanism also explain the result?

  • What would happen if the conditions were changed?

  • Why can the same problem be solved from several completely different directions?

At this point, UKChO or C3L6 stops being merely “an award”.

It becomes a way of developing chemical reasoning.

The experience can then naturally provide material for university applications, interviews and, more importantly, future study in chemistry.

3. Three practical pieces of advice

For students: assess your curiosity before assessing the award

Ask yourself two questions:

Would you willingly spend an hour trying to understand an unfamiliar organic mechanism?

Do you study chemistry only because you want a high exam grade, or do you genuinely enjoy asking why things happen?

If the answer is no, there is nothing wrong with deciding that competitions are not currently the best use of your time.

There is no single academic pathway that every strong student has to follow.

For parents: do not confuse someone else's CV with a formula for admission

Seeing that an Oxford or Cambridge offer holder has a UKChO Gold award does not mean:

UKChO Gold = Oxford or Cambridge offer.

That is correlation, not a simple causal relationship.

The priority should be to help students establish strong school grades, language skills and study habits, while allowing them to discover which subjects they genuinely enjoy.

Competitions should be a natural extension of academic interest, rather than another compulsory activity created by admissions anxiety.

For planning: progress gradually

If a student is already performing very strongly in school chemistry and is considering subjects such as Chemistry, Medicine, Natural Sciences or Chemical Engineering, a staged approach usually makes more sense.

For example, a Year 12 student might first attempt C3L6 to become familiar with long-form scientific reading, unfamiliar concepts and multi-step reasoning.

If they enjoy that style of problem solving, they can then progress towards the UKChO.

This is usually healthier and more productive than beginning with the expectation that:

“I must get UKChO Gold.”

Final thoughts

Education should not become an endless arms race in which every year requires another award, another course and another line on a CV.

Students who are genuinely suited to competitions often do not need constant external pressure.

They become frustrated when they cannot solve a problem. They voluntarily look up unfamiliar reactions. They enjoy the satisfaction of finally understanding a difficult mechanism.

And for students who are not ready for competitions yet, there is absolutely nothing wrong with first mastering the chemistry taught at school.

Competitions are one possible route towards academic development. They are not a compulsory badge for being a strong student.

Rather than copying somebody else's academic profile, it is far more useful to decide what you enjoy, what you are ready for, and where your time will create the greatest value.

Assess realistically, progress at the right pace, and remember that genuine academic growth is worth far more than simply collecting another award.