Thirteen Harker seniors were named U.S. Presidential Scholar candidates for 2016. Each year, about 4,000 graduating seniors nationwide are selected, based on their SAT and ACT scores. As many as 161 graduating seniors are then named Presidential Scholars. Students must be invited to apply for the program.
This year’s candidates from Harker are Akshay Battu, Anthony Luo, Evan Lohn, Elina Sendonaris, Jonathan Ma, Karen Tu, Michael Zhao, Janet Lee, Vineet Kosaraju, Anika Mohindra, Natalie Simonian, Allison Wang and Richard Yi.
Scholars are chosen in April based on various criteria, including academic and artistic achievement, leadership and community involvement. They are invited to travel to Washington, D.C., in June for a National Recognition Program that will include a variety of activities. There, they also will be presented with a Presidential Scholars Medallion at a ceremony sponsored by the White House.
Also in February, a group of Harker seventh graders — Sidra Xu, Betsy Tian, Arya Maheshwari, Jason Lin, Alexander Kumar, Nicky Kriplani, Paul Kratter and Jonathan Chao — competed in a middle school TEAMS competition and scored highest in the country in all divisions. A total of 98 teams entered the competition, which consists of four topics, two essays and a design challenge. The students will head to Nashville this summer for the national stage of the TEAMS competition.
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This past weekend, two teams of Harker students earned first place finishes at the TEAMS (Test of Engineering Aptitude in Math and Science) competition. The event, held at San Jose State University, consisted of a two-part exam that lasted about three hours. Upper school math teacher Anthony Silk said Harker faced “tougher competition” this year, but still managed to earn first place in both the grade 9-10 and grade 11-12 divisions.
The first place team in the grade 9-10 division consisted of sophomores Jerry Chen, Amy Jin, Michael Kwan, Jimmy Lin, Sahana Srinivasan, Justin Xie, Shaya Zarkesh and Randy Zhao. The first place grade 11-12 team was made up of juniors Steven Cao, Neymika Jain, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Arjun Subramaniam, Peter Wu and David Zhu.
New to the competition this year was a design challenge that had students building the highest tower possible using just 20 sheets of 8.5” x 11” paper. Zhu, who captained the first place grade 11-12 team, called the challenge “a great way for us to develop on-the-spot problem solving and designing skills that typically cannot be trained with written problems.
Rajiv Movva, grade 10, was recently named one of 100 students nationwide to win the Emperor Science Award, presented by PBS LearningMedia, Stand Up To Cancer and the Entertainment Industry Foundation. Movva was one of 100 among nearly 1,200 grade 10 and 11 students who submitted essays for the contest. As a winner, he will receive a $1,500 stipend, a Google Chromebook and the opportunity to participate in an eight- to 12-week cancer research project with a mentoring scientist. Congratulations!
This was the first year of the Emperor Science Award program, which is aimed toward students with an interest in pursuing a career in scientific research. Its goal is to find qualified sophomores and juniors who will be chosen to work with university-level research mentors.
Two dozen Harker student writers were honored in this year’s Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the awards have existed since 1923. Prominent past winners include Andy Warhol, Langston Hughes, Judy Blume and Wangechi Mutu.
Twenty-three Harker upper school students and one middle school student were honored this year. Arushee Bhoja, grade 9, received a Gold Key award in the flash fiction category, and a Silver Key and honorable mention in poetry. Sophomore Emily Chen received two Gold Keys in poetry and a Silver Key in short story. In personal essay/memoir, junior Alexis Gauba earned an honorable mention. Senior Kaity Gee won two Gold Keys in flash fiction, as well as one in poetry and one in writing portfolio. She also received a Silver Key and eight honorable mentions in poetry.
Jordan Goheen, grade 11, received an honorable mention for poetry, while fellow junior Joyce Huang hauled in a Gold Key and a Silver Key in the critical essay category and an honorable mention in personal essay/memoir. Junior Angela Kim’s pair of entries in the personal essay/memoir category earned her a Silver Key and an honorable mention.
Junior Sarisha Kurup earned three Gold Keys – two in short story and one in poetry – and three Silver Keys in the same categories. Kurup was also awarded five honorable mentions for poetry. Junior Chen Yu Li’s “The Dance Room” won her an honorable mention in personal essay/memoir, and Erin Liu, grade 9, received a Gold Key in the same category for her work, titled “In Our Hands.”
Rajiv Movva, grade 10, received an honorable mention for his critical essay “On Cancer Research,” and junior Jordan Murtiff won a Gold Key in personal essay/memoir. In poetry, Evani Radiya-Dixit, grade 11, was awarded two honorable mentions for her pieces “Gunshot” and “The Mirror.” Andrew Rule, also a junior, submitted four short stories to the contest, which earned him two Gold Keys, a Silver Key and an honorable mention. “Gravity” a personal essay/memoir earned senior Samali Sahoo a Silver Key, while junior Vedaad Shakib’s “A Constructive Use of Time” was awarded a Silver Key in the same category.
Five of senior Elisabeth Siegel’s poems were winners in the contest, earning her a Gold Key, a Silver Key and three honorable mentions. Her short story, “Clean,” also won a Silver Key. Sophomore Sahana Srinivasan received an honorable mention for “The Stages of Reading a Book” in the personal essay/memoir category. Three of junior Meilan Steimle’s entries in personal essay/memoir received Gold Key awards, while her flash fiction piece, “Postcards,” won her a Silver Key. Steimle also earned honorable mentions in flash fiction, personal essay/memoir and short story.
Maya Valluru, grade 11, was awarded a Silver Key and an honorable mention in poetry, as well as an honorable mention in flash fiction, and Eleanor Xiao, grade 10, received two Silver Keys for her entries in personal essay/memoir. Freshman Alexander Young received an honorable mention in critical essay, and Tiffany Zhu, grade 11, earned two honorable mentions for dramatic script and flash fiction.
At the middle school level, eighth grader Cynthia Chen received an honorable mention for her poem, “Reflections.”
Napa Valley Register – Jan. 2, 2016: Harker alumnus Will Jarvis MS ’97 is featured in article about Jarvis Estate winery, which he runs with his father in the Napa Valley.
Earlier this month, senior Allison Wang was a national competitor in the “Who Wants to Be a Mathematician” game, hosted by the American Mathematical Society. After going through two rounds of testing in the fall, Wang qualified for the final stage of the game, where she competed against nine other high school students at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Seattle. More than 2,300 students nationwide took the qualifying tests. Her performance earned Harker’s math department a $1,000 award.
Last week, four Harker middle school students were chosen to be members of statewide ensembles that will perform in February at the California All-State Music Education Conference. French hornist Kai-Ming Ang, clarinetist Jenny Shaw and flutist Anika Tiwari, all grade 8, were selected for the California Band Directors Association’s All-State Junior High School Concert Band. Trumpeter Leland Rossi, grade 7, was selected to play with the CBDA’s All-State Junior High School Jazz Band, making him the first Harker student to play for an all-state jazz band. Together, these four students represent the largest group of Harker middle school students ever selected to play for all-state ensembles.
“The audition is rigorous and requires great preparation and focus as they have to turn in a recording of scales and etudes,” said middle school music teacher Dave Hart. “These students were selected out of auditions from any seventh or eighth grader in the state of California, so it is quite an honor and opportunity.”
Sarah Mohammed, grade 5, won a bronze medal for archery at the 2016 California State Indoor Championships, in the women’s under-12 division. Her score can be found in this link.
The official medal ceremony will be held on Feb. 27. Mohammed will also be going onto compete in the nationals to represent California. Nationals indoor competitions takes place over many weekends all over the United States, lasting a couple days on average.
Here’s a nice mention of Sarah’s qualification in the San Jose Mercury’s Sports Shorts, too! http://www.mercurynews.com/high-school-sports/ci_29441541/sports-shorts-saunders-selected-maac-35th-anniversary-womens
Three Harker students received the highest possible scores on their Advanced Placement exams, according to the College Board. Vedaad Shakib, grade 11, and Sahana Srinivasan, grade 10, were two of just 67 students nationwide to earn a top score on the computer science exam. Janet Lee, grade 12, was one of 54 students to do the same in microeconomics.
Last year, 2.5 million U.S. high school students took AP exams. Of those, only 322 earned the highest possible score.
San Jose Mercury News – Jan. 16, 2016: Harker eighth grader Mahika Halepete’s letter about the importance of education for low-income students appears in the Readers’ letters section.
GoStanford.com – Jan. 11, 2016: Dakota McNealy, grade 12, is the subject of a story about his decision to play for Stanford in the fall of 2016. He will join his brother, Maverick McNealy ’13, on the Stanford squad. See also the coverage in Golfweek and Palo Alto Online.
San Jose Mercury News – Jan. 6, 2016: Harker is mentioned as one of the Bay Area schools that had semifinalists in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search
India West – Dec. 23, 2015: Senior Vineet Kosaraju and his friend are featured in a story about a board game they created to help teach coding to children.
Napa Valley Register – Jan. 2, 2016: Harker alumnus Will Jarvis MS ’97 is featured in article about Jarvis Estate winery, which he runs with his father in the Napa Valley.