A longstanding world record at our illustrious institution has officially fallen. Vietnamese student Miles Nguyen has become the fastest student in history to receive a 4-year degree from the University of Toronto, completing his Specialist BA in East Asian Studies in only 2 years, 3 months, 11 days, 5 hours, 2 minutes, and 36 seconds.
Nguyen, 21, entered U of T in September 2013 after being introduced to the university’s speedrunning community during his gap year. Most of its speedrunners are dedicated to certain games, but a select few choose to focus their efforts on the university itself. These members attempt to finish their degree in the minimum amount of time possible, often foregoing exercise, social interaction, hygiene, and other “side quests” in their pursuit of speed at any cost.
Nguyen was one of those members, enrolling with the intent of participating in the “Any%” category. This popular speedrun category only has the requirement to finish successfully, with no additional CGPA restrictions on participants. Nguyen beat the university’s previous best time by almost 4 months, successfully cutting an entire semester from the run. This was accomplished thanks to a difficult strat which required him to achieve high grades in first year to accelerate his course load. His goal was a 4.0 GPA after first semester and a 3.5 CGPA after second, but he quickly ran into his first roadblock: exams.
In an interview with Toike staff, Nguyen commented, “I looked into whether there could be any sequence breaks involving skipping the first boss level, but in the end I went with an in-game cheat code instead.” The university declined to comment when asked about allegations that Miles had plagiarised classmates during his first semester exams.
Aided by his strong grades in first year and a frame-perfect doctor’s note, Miles was able to obtain special permission to take an extra course in the summer after first year. With 9 completed FCEs going into second year, all he needed to do for the remainder of his time at U of T was pass all of his courses to get the record. However, there was one last potential timesaver to attempt. “The clock starts from the start of your first class and goes to the end of your last exam,” explained Nguyen. “In my final semester, I tried to pick courses that were going to have exams early in the exam period, to shave a few more days off the record. That would have been the icing on the cake. Unfortunately I got hit with some bad RNG–my last exam was scheduled for December 19. I submitted a last-ditch request to get it moved up, but sadly the Registrar didn’t honour it.”
When asked what was next for him, Miles sounded uncertain. After years of effort, achieving a speedrunning goal sometimes causes runners to lose interest in the category until someone else comes along and beats their record. He stated, “Maybe I can start streaming on Twitch, but it would have to be something more intellectually stimulating, like Super Smash Bros. After all, I missed out on a lot of Melee in my 28 months at university.”
Nguyen added, “It’s weird, I wanted to showcase my run at the speedrunning marathon Awesome Games Done Quick, but they declined it without comment. You’d think that such an unprecedented run, shaving almost 4 months off a record, would ignite the speedrunning community and lead to many more people trying U of T. But it just didn’t seem to interest people, and I have no idea why.” Miles convocated with a Bachelor of Arts in June 2016, one of four students who didn’t have the 1.85 CGPA required to achieve an Honours Bachelor of Arts.
In our last update on the U of T speedrunning community, we highlighted brothers David and Mike Johnson, who were working together on the university’s gruelling “100% Run”. While the Any% Run’s goal is simply to complete one’s degree as quickly as possible, the 100% Run demands a 4.0 CGPA as well. While David will be starting second year in September 2016, Mike needed to perform a hard reset after an unfortunate 83% in MAT136 (Calculus 1B). Mike will be re-entering first year in September.
