BY ELİF BÜŞRA KARAZİYAN (MBG/II)
Kemal Enes Akyüz, a third-year Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Physics student at Bilkent, recently aced the ALES graduate education entrance exam by getting a perfect score on each of the exam’s three sections, for a total of 100 points. This made him the first-ranked student overall, as well as for each section.
Our reporter caught up with Kemal to ask him about this achievement and also his academic success in general.
Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Kemal Enes Akyüz. I’m a third-year student and am studying electrical engineering and physics as a double major. This academic year, I took the 2022 ALES/3 exam. The exam is given three times a year, and I took the last one in the fall semester. I got a perfect score and so ranked first among the nearly 140,000 candidates who took the exam last fall.
What do you think was the reason for your success?
To be honest, my main idea in taking ALES this early was to take it as many times as I could, and then I would be able to use my highest scores when applying to a master’s program. Since I had the spring semester as well as a full year ahead of me, I thought maybe I could take the exam as many as three or four times. So, I wasn’t that serious about it the first time. Plus, unfortunately I had an EMT midterm on the same day, so I had to get out of the exam and get to Bilkent pretty quickly. I didn’t really study for the ALES exam because I didn’t have time.
There are 50 questions each on the math and Turkish parts. I would say that the math questions are pretty easy if you remember the topics from 9th and 10th grade in high school; they’re similar to the university entrance exam’s TYT section. What makes the difference in the ALES exam is usually the Turkish part, where many of the questions consist of long, complicated paragraphs.
I would attribute my success in answering those questions to my hobby of reading. From the beginning of high school, whenever I had time on my hands, I spent it reading books. I’ve kept up this habit throughout my university years as well, which, I guess, made the paragraphs easier. ALES is not the kind of exam you can easily study for, since the questions depend on reading comprehension, and that takes a lot of time to develop. Maybe a better idea here is to take the exam as many times as you can to get a better score overall.
Are you planning on doing a master’s degree in Turkey or abroad?
I would certainly like to do it abroad if I get the opportunity, but what I wanted to do here was make sure I had a backup plan to study for a master’s degree in Turkey. And right now, since I have the best possible score for the master’s application, I’m pretty relaxed about trying for universities abroad, knowing that I can always go with the backup plan and study at Bilkent for my master’s degree as well.
Why did you choose Bilkent?
First of all, my family lives in Ankara; I’m a resident here, so it seemed wise to go to one of the universities in Ankara. I first decided on what I was going to major in, which was electrical and electronics engineering. And later on I went through the lists of faculty members, their publications and the courses given at the various universities and learned that Bilkent was one of the best among the universities in Ankara where education was taken the most seriously. The academic staff and publications were superior to those of the other universities. Thus, I decided to study here.
How do you deal with the amount of work a double major requires?
When you break down the double major, you’ll find that there are many courses in common between the two departments. And if you choose your electives carefully, you can actually bring down the number of extra courses you need to finish a second major to around 10. And since there are 8 semesters, in some of which you’re allowed to take 4 courses, you can actually take an extra course each semester and finish both majors simultaneously. But you can also just study at Bilkent one more year.
What motivates you to study?
I find it satisfying to learn and understand things. That would be my main drive, I guess. Looking at life, what I’ve found to be most fulfilling is learning and understanding topics and then building upon that knowledge. Therefore, when I study a topic, especially at university, I can get down to its fundamentals – which we couldn’t do in high school – and understand the theory behind how things are. That motivates me to learn and understand more. And on top of that, I find striving for the improvement of a nation and all humanity the noblest aspiration in life. I, personally, hope to improve life for future generations.
What are your hobbies?
It’s relevant so I’ll say it first: I like reading books. For example, during this semester break I spent all my free time reading because I didn’t have enough time for outside reading during the semester. Also, I have an electric guitar, which I sometimes spend time playing.
