At the MathCounts state competition on March 31 at Stanford University, the Harker middle school team of grade 8 students Alexander Hu, Rishab Parthasarathy and William Zhao and seventh grader Sally Zhu won the state MathCounts championship in a field of 35 teams and 175 students. It was the fourth win for Harker at the state level, following wins in 2008, 2011 and 2014. Among individual competitors, Parthasarathy placed second overall after a tie-breaker, and Zhu placed fourth. Alexander Hu also turned in a great performance, placing 10th. Other standouts were Zhao, who finished in 25th, and Mark Hu, grade 8, placing 29th.
Another state-level competition was held concurrently for Southern California students, and the four highest-scoring students in the state qualified for the team that will represent California at the MathCounts National Competition this weekend in Washington, D.C. Parthasarathy placed among the top four statewide to qualify for the National Competition. Zhu missed qualifying by the narrowest of margins, earning just a single point less than the student who made the California team.
“Most of these students have been with the MathCounts program for two years and the title of California state champions is well-deserved for each one of them,” said middle school math chair Vandana Kadam. “This is an incredible achievement for the students and for the school.”
Four Harker upper school students and one middle school student have advanced to the third round of the USA Math Olympiad and Junior Math Olympiad, respectively. Sophomores Cynthia Chen, Rohan Cherukuri and Jeffrey Kwan, senior Swapnil Garg and eighth grader Rishab Parthasarathy were among the top 500 students from the roughly 75,000 who took the American Math Contest in February to qualify for the third round. The nine-hour test is taken over the course of two days. Top scorers will have the chance to represent the United States at the International Mathematical Olympiad, set to take place this summer in Romania.
Math enthusiasts from 13 schools visited the Harker middle school campus on March 4 for the 16th annual Diana Nichols Math Invitational, in which about 300 students competed, according to math teacher Vandana Kadam.
In the grade 6 individual competition, Harker students claimed all of the top five spots, with Aniketh Tummala placing first, Ethan Liu coming in second, Heidi Lu earning third, Emma Gao placing fourth and Angelina Hu placing fifth. Harker also did well in grade 7 individual, where Stephen Xia took second and Rohan Bhowmik placed fifth. David Dai placed first in the grade 8 individual event to give Harker another top placement.
A total of 50 teams competed in the team event, which was also highly competitive. Harker’s “6R” team of Maria Chrysafis, Varun Fuloria, Emma Gao, Angelina Hu, Ethan Liu, Aniketh Tummala and Michelle Wei took second in the sixth grade category, in which the “6S” team of Ramit Goyal, Chloe Lee, Heidi Lu, Claire Luo, Julie Shi, Cynthia Wang and Ella Yee placed third. In the grade 7 team event, Tiffany Chang, Amruta Dharmapurikar, Alex Lan, Krish Maniar, Ashley Ruan, Grant Sims and Stephen Xia took second place. David Dai, Alice Feng, Angela Jia, Sasvath Ramachandran, Rohan Thakur, Clarice Wang and Emily Zhou earned second place in the grade 8 team event.
The yearly estimation contest challenged students to guess the total number of Harker Math Invitational participants from 2002 to 2017. Thornton Junior High School’s Larry Zhi won the contest with an estimate of 4,040, just shy of the actual number of 4,045! The next closest guess was made by Harker student Angela Jia, grade 8, who estimated 4022.
Last month, senior Swapnil Garg was invited to participate in the Romanian Master of Mathematics competition, held Feb. 21-26 in Bucharest. He followed up this already-impressive feat by being one of just 10 competitors worldwide to win a gold medal. Garg’s performance in the competition also helped the United States team take first place overall. Receiving an invitation to RMM is a major achievement for math students, who must first perform well enough in the team selection test (TST) or team selection exam (TSE), which is taken by students who place among the top competitors in the USA Mathematical Olympiad.
Harker middle school students had a great showing at the Santa Clara Valley MathCounts competition on Feb. 10, winning the team event and setting a new Harker record with four students earning perfect scores.
In individual competition, eighth graders Alexander Hu, Mark Hu and Rishab Parthasarathy and seventh grader Sally Zhu all had perfect scores of 46, tying with 11 other students at the event. Such a result demonstrates the level of competition in the Santa Clara Valley chapter, which “is known to be the toughest chapter for MathCounts in the country,” said middle school math teacher Vandana Kadam. The contest went to a tie-breaker, from which Parthasarathy emerged victorious. Connie Jiang, grade 7, was among the 15 students who tied for second place, and won the tie-breaker round to officially take second with 45 points. Grade 8 students David Dai, Rohan Thakur and Kevin Wang, as well as Riya Gupta, grade 7, placed in the top 25 percent at the event, which featured more than 400 competitors from 46 schools.
The team of Alex Hu, Rishab Parthasarathy, Sally Zhu and eight grader William Zhao won the team competition by a slim margin, inching past Miller Middle School by just a quarter of a point. This victory advances the team to the state competition, to be held March 31 at Stanford University. Due to their performances in the individual event, Mark Hu and Connie Jiang also advanced to the state level. Qualifiers from the state competition will travel to Washington, D.C., for the MathCounts National Championship in May.
Harker’s upper school math club sent a team to the Princeton University Mathematics Competition, a tier one competition. Overall, our team finished in fifth place out of 60-plus teams – an excellent performance! In the individual subcategory, Swapnil Garg, grade 12, finished in a very impressive second place out of 300-plus students. Go math Eagles!
Harker middle school students performed extremely well in California Mathematics League contests during the 2016-17 school year, according to a report published by the organization. Harker was the third highest-placing school in the league and placed first in the region at the grade 6 level, with Riya Gupta, Ashley Hu, Connie Jiang, Sally Zhu and Tiffany Chang all placing among the top 35 sixth grade competitors.
At the grade 7 level, Harker was the top-placing school in the league and the region, with students Alexander Hu, Rishab Parthasarathy, Akhilesh Chegu, Kevin Wang and William Zhao named among the top 49 performers.
Harker tied with Saratoga’s Redwood Middle School for second place in the grade 8 category. Among the top 34 students were Utkarsh Priyam, Eric Zhu, Vivian Jin and Sidra Xu.
Ashvin Swaminathan ’13 was recently awarded Harvard’s David Mumford Undergraduate Mathematics Prize, which is given to the “most promising” outstanding seniors who have chosen mathematics as a concentration, according to the Harvard University website. Swaminathan will graduate from Harvard this month with degrees in mathematics and physics. Last month he was awarded a Soros Fellowship for New Americans, earning additional funding for his graduate studies in mathematics, which he plans to begin in the fall at Princeton.
Harker Hospital was open for business in Larissa Weaver’s first grade math class to help students learn about graphs. Weaver invited pediatrician and Harker parent Dr. Shefali Shete (Allie and Sasha, both grade 1) to come in and show students how she uses graphs to measure a baby’s progress. The students had a great time measuring the babies!
Three Harker students had notable performances at Santa Clara University’s High School Mathematics Contest, held in November. Senior Kai-Siang Ang took first place among seniors at the contest, while Misha Ivkov, grade 12, and Joanna Lin, grade 11, both received honorable mentions. A total of 131 students participated in the contest.
Started in 1958, the High School Mathematics Contest is sponsored by SCU’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and consists of a three-hour exam that tests problem-solving skills and mathematical ingenuity. It is typically held on the second Saturday of November.