In November, Harker students participated and ranked in numerous math competitions, both individually and as teams.
On Nov. 7, Harker tied for second place nationwide with a score of 78 in the National Assessment Team Scramble, a 100-problem, 30-minute team contest. Students collaborated after school on the questions, which covered a broad range of math topics.
In addition, Harker continued to do well in Interstellar, an online math contest endorsed by the Math Association of America and run by American Math Competitions. The contest, implemented this year, differs from traditional math tests in its online, round-robin format.
“Interstellar isn’t all that different from other contests, but I’ve made typos when putting in my answer, so you do have to be more careful,” said Patrick Lin, grade 11. “We’ve consistently been getting top finishes each week, so we should hopefully go pretty far in the contest.”
Harker defeated Morgantown High School, Grand Blanc High School and BASIS Tucson North to reach the octofinals in their division. The team is currently ranked second nationwide.
In addition, the first round of the Mandelbrot competition, a five-round individual contest, was held Nov. 4. Students chose between the regional test and the more difficult national test.
In national rankings, Richard Yi, grade 10, and seniors Vikram Sundar and Varun Mohan tied for first place with perfect scores of 14. Junior Ashwath Thirumalai was close behind with a score of 12. In regional rankings, Nitya Mani, grade 11, earned a perfect score, and sophomore Jessica Zhu scored 11. Harker is ranked seventh nationwide based on the scores from the first round.
Meanwhile, 10 students participated in the Santa Clara University High School Mathematics Competition on Nov. 16. The results of the contest have not yet been released.
The College Board recently announced that The Harker School earned the distinction this year of having the largest number of perfect scores of any school in the world. Harker had 10 students who earned perfect scores on their AP exams in spring 2013, but they earned a total of 11 perfect scores, as one student had perfect scores on two tests.
That is more than 10 percent of the total worldwide. “This is a tribute to the dedicated teachers and hardworking students at The Harker School,” said Deborah Davis, director of college readiness communications at The College Board. Samuel Lepler was the AP Economics teacher, last year, who guided these students through their studies.
The following students received perfect scores on the AP Microeconomics exam in 2013: Jennifer Dai, Kevin Duraiswamy Angela Ma, Vikram Naidu, Anisha Padwekar, Rahul Sridhar, Brandon Yang, all now seniors; Aaron Huang, Savi Joshi, now juniors; and Ashvin Swaminathan, who graduated in 2013.
Swaminathan received perfect scores on both the AP Macroeconomics and AP Microeconomics exams, the only student in the world to do so; it also makes him one of only four students in the world to earn a perfect score on two AP exams in 2013.
“We started our ‘Perfect Scorer’ campaign last fall,” said Davis, “with the students who earned perfect scores on AP exams in 2012 – with letters to each student (and) their high school principals.”
This year, a total of 109 students worldwide earned a perfect score on an AP exam in 2013. Here is the worldwide breakdown by subject: Calculus AB – 8; Calculus BC – 11; Chemistry –1; Computer Science A – 19; Microeconomics – 33; Macroeconomics – 12; Physics C: Mechanics – 15; Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism – 8; Psychology – 2; Statistics– 2; United States Government and Politics – 2.
Harker’s Public Forum (PF) team kicked off November by winning the overall team sweepstakes award and taking home the tournament championship at the Minneapple Debate Tournament, held Nov. 1-2 at Apple Valley High School in Minnesota.
Having been successful competitors in this tournament during their years at Harker, Akshay Jagadeesh ’12 and Pranav Sharma ’13 accompanied the Harker students to the tournament.
Debating the merits of the NSA domestic surveillance program, four Harker PF teams made it to the elimination rounds of this prestigious tournament, comprising more than 100 teams from numerous states.
In the first elimination round, the bracket set juniors Andrew Jin and David Lin up to meet fellow juniors Nikhil Kishore and Vamsi Gadiraju. This automatically advanced Jin-Lin and earned both teams bids to the Tournament of Champions. Aadyot Bhatnagar and Avik Wadhwa, both grade 11, and Sorjo Banerjee and Mohnish Shah, both grade 10, also won their first rounds to earn spots in the Sweet 16 and qualifying legs to the TOC.
All three remaining Harker teams won their octofinal rounds and advanced to the Elite 8, where the bracket again pitted Harker against Harker. Bhatnagar-Wadhwa advanced over Banerjee-Shah, while Jin-Lin beat The Blake School (Minnesota), leaving two Harker teams in the top four at the tournament.
Jin-Lin faced a tough battle against last year’s national semifinalist from Hawken School (Ohio) and was ultimately defeated, while Bhatnagar-Wadhwa prevailed against a team from Trinity Prep (Florida) to advance to finals.
In a final round in front of the tournament, Bhatnagar-Wadhwa defeated Hawken on a 4-1 decision to earn the tournament title and clinch the school sweepstakes award for Harker.
At the conclusion of preliminary rounds, Bhatnagar also earned recognition as the third best individual speaker out of more than 200 competitors, while Lin was recognized as fourth overall.
New Class of 2013 alumni Kenny Zhang, Anuj Sharmaand Aneesh Chona were defending national champions in the public debate forum sponsored by the National Forensic League (NFL), which held its first tournament in 1931. Sharma and Chona made history as the first team to repeat a final round appearance in a debate event as a partnership. Although they lost in finals in a close decision, they had gone undefeated through 15 rounds of competition. Zhang won second place in the dramatic interpretation event, marking the highest honor a Harker student has won at a speech national championship. There were some 4,000 people watching the debate live and thousands more watched it stream online. Go Forensic Eagles!
The middle school forensics program traveled to Birmingham, Ala., in June to compete at the National Junior Forensics League National Tournament. The team as a collective brought home the National School of Excellence Award that recognizes the top three speech and debate programs in the country. The team also earned the National Debate School of Excellence Award given to the top six debate programs in the country.
As individuals, the students earned many awards including two national championships. The team of Aditya Dhar and Alexander Lam, who both start grade 9 next year, debated the benefit of drone strikes in Public Forum debate and after nine tough rounds were declared the national champions.
In Congressional debate, the Harker team had the top four students in the event which is a monumental achievement. Winning his second national championship, Lam took first place. Dhar took second, rising freshmen Emaad Raghib was third and Misha Tseitlin was fourth. Rishab Gargeya, who also recently finished grade 8, was also a finalist. Last year at Nationals Dhar won first place and Lam won second place.
In Policy Debate, recent middle school graduates Raymond Xu and Rahul Shukla advanced to the final four in their discussion about transportation infrastructure. Rising eighth grader Megan Huynh and Anika Jain, a freshman next year, advanced to the top 16.
In Lincoln Douglas debate, the students discussed the desirability of an oppressive government over no government. Rising grade 8 students Serena Lu and Sagar Rao advanced to the top sixteen. Lu and Liza Turchinsky, also in grade 8 next year, were recognized as being exceptional speakers and winning the seventh place and fifth place awards in that category. Turchinsky also received second place in the continuation rounds.
Harker also had students who competed in Original Oratory, a 10-minute speech students write themselves that call the audience to action. Jain, Nikhil Dharmaraj, rising grade 8, and Carissa Chen, starting grade 9 in the fall, all advanced to the elimination rounds. Chen advanced to finals and received the fifth place award; she was also recognized for her impromptu speaking skills and advanced to the top 12 in this event.
The students had an amazing performance and the coaches are all very proud of their success. “Thank you for all of your support of middle school forensics throughout the year,” said middle school forensics teacher Karina Momary. “I know our schedule is not the easiest to accommodate but your flexibility and support is what allows the students to participate and excel. A special thank you to Jonathan Brusco. Jonathan gave topic lectures to the Public Forum and Lincoln Douglas debaters before Nationals. His insights helped the boys win the finals!”
In April, Anand Natarajan ’09 became the second Harker alum in three years to receive the J.E. Wallace Sterling Award for Scholastic Achievement from Stanford University, one of the university’s highest academic honors.
For the ceremony, Natarajan was asked to invite the teacher he felt was most influential during his school years, and he chose upper school physics teacher Eric Nelson, who shared his thoughts on the experience of having Natarajan as one of his students. In one memory that Nelson shared, Natarajan was “tasked with modeling the trajectory of a projectile that was subject to drag forces. The projectile was a ‘poof’ ball that was being fired out of our offering for the 2006 FIRST robotics competition,” he recalled. “Anand was memorable because he was so persistent in wanting to model the motion of the ball, but what really stood out was the fact that his email correspondence was so articulate that I thought at first that I was addressing his parents.”
Another favorite memory of Nelson’s was when Natarajan discovered and corrected an error in a calculus model Nelson had developed. “It was really quite remarkable, especially considering that he was only 12 years old at the time,” Nelson said.
This article was originally published in the summer 2013 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s upper school debate squads saw plenty of success in the spring. Their most recent competition was the National Catholic Forensic League’s (NCFL) Grand National Tournament in Philadelphia, held over Memorial Day weekend. There, Zina Jawadi, grade 11, placed fourth out of hundreds of competitors in original oratory. Meanwhile, Kenny Zhang, grade 11, was a quarterfinalist in dramatic interpretation; Steven Wang, grade 10, and junior Andrew Wang were octofinalists in extemporaneous speaking and original oratory, respectively; and Saachi Jain, grade 11, was a semifinalist in Congressional debate.
At the National Debate Coaches Association Championships in April, Pranav Reddy, grade 10, was a finalist in Lincoln-Douglas debate, finishing second, while Reyhan Kader, grade 12, and Kevin Duraiswamy, grade 11, finished third in Public Forum. Also placing high in Public Forum was the team of seniors Kiran Arimilli and Neel Jani, who finished in the top eight. Shivani Mitra, grade 12, and Stephanie Lu, grade 11, finished in the top 12, as did the team of juniors Sreyas Misra and Neil Khemani.
Grade 11 student Srikar Pyda won the seventh place speaker award, and Reddy won the eighth place speaker award in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Other individual achievements in Public Forum debate were Arimilli winning the seventh place speaker award and Lu winning the 10th place speaker award. In Congressional debate, sophomore Leon Chin earned sixth place.
At the California High School Speech Association’s State Tournament, also held in April, Zhang reached the semifinals of dramatic interpretation, while Madhuri Nori, grade 10, and Andrew Wang both reached the semifinals of Original Oratory.
The Tournament of Champions, held April 27-29, saw more Harker students placing high in Public Forum debate. The team of Anuj Sharma and Aneesh Chona, both grade 12, reached the top eight, with two additional teams – Kader and Duraiswamy and seniors David Grossman and Nik Agarwal – placing in the top 16. Misra and Khemani reached the elimination round. Also performing well at this tournament was Steven Wang, who was a quarterfinalist in extemporaneous speaking.
Yesterday, rising senior Urvi Gupta was recognized for the second time this year for an innovative math tutoring program she created in November 2011 when she received a commendation from San Jose City Council members Rose Herrera, Xavier Campos and Kansen Chu.
In April, Gupta was named San Jose Public Library Volunteer of the Year for the creation of a math tutoring program at the San Jose Public Libraries called OneInMath, which assists students in K-3. The program aims to give young math students a solid foundation in mathematics that will help them in their later years. To date, more than 250 students have been helped by OneInMath. Gupta herself has managed the entire program, creating practice sheets and videos, designing the teaching method, training volunteers and more.
“This is a great recognition for Urvi’s hundreds of hours of work and her dedication to the program to help young kids,” said Urvi’s father, Vivek. “It will also be a great recognition of Harker as a school that nurtures the students to be selfless, kind and giving.”
Harker students earned several top placements at the California State Science Fair in April. In the senior division, Andrew Zhang, grade 10, and his partner took second place in the physics and astronomy category, classmate Sriram Somasundaram earned third place in microbiology, Christopher Fu and Daniel Pak, both grade 11, took fourth place in zoology, Nikash Shankar was awarded fourth place in pharmacology/toxicology and sophomore Rishabh Jain received an honorable mention in mathematics and software. In the junior division, Venkat Sankar, grade 8, won first place in environmental sciences.
In late April, grade 8 students Venkat Sankar, Arjun Subramaniam and Davd Zhu and grade 7 students Edgar Lin and Rajiv Movva traveled to Washington, D.C., for the National Science Bowl, in which the team placed fifth overall among 46 other teams hailing from 34 states. Middle school science teacher Vandana Kadam called the placing “a huge achievement for a school that started Science Bowl just three years ago.” Remarkably, the team went undefeated for the first nine rounds of the competition, and were just two rounds away from the championship match.
The team also managed to place 12th in a non-academic portion of the event in which the students had to build a vehicle that could carry a container of salt a distance of 20 meters in the shortest possible time, powered by a lithium ion battery. The Harker team’s vehicle went the distance in 7.6 seconds, just over one second longer than the first-place finisher’s vehicle.
Not ones to let a trip out of state go to waste, the students also saw the many sights offered by the nation’s capital, including the Natural History Museum, the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol Building.