In October, National Assessment & Testing (NAT) announced that a team of Harker mathematicians finished in sixth place out of 25 teams during the 2010 Fall Startup Event. The team, coached by upper school math teacher Misael Fisico, included Vikram Sundar, Varun Mohan and Alex Pei, grade 9; Ashvin Swaminathan, grade 10; Patrick Yang, Albert Wu, Lucy Cheng and Ramya Rangan, grade 11; and Richard Chiou, grade 12. The test was administered by mail and each student was required to answer 100 problems in half an hour. Each student’s results then were used to make the team’s final score. Part of the challenge, according to a NAT press release, is choosing which problems to solve and which ones to skip.
A total of 52 grade 12 students have received commendations from this year’s National Merit program, putting them among about 34,000 students out of 1.5 million nationwide. They are: Ambrish Amaranthan, Trisha Basu, Appu Bhaskar, Rishi Bhatia, Tracey Chan, Jacob Chappell, Meghna Chatterjee, Christine Chien, Daniel Cho, Timothy Chou, Jennifer Dai, Mallika Dhaliwal, Anthony Fandrianto, Katharine Forsberg, Peter Gao, Pierre Gerard, Vrinda Goel, Miranda Gorman, Ashley Hejtmanek, Anshul Jain, Lorraine Kim, Warren Kwong, Christina Li, Andrew Liang, Katie Liang, Kristi Lui, Rohan Mahajan, Partha Mahajani, Henna Mishra, Daisy Mohrman, Shireen Moshkelani, Arko Mukherjee, Moneesha Mukherjee, Nirjhar Mundkur, Chris Ng, Margaux Nielsen, Shannon O’Reilly, Ruchika Podury, Michael Prutton, Tanya Rai, James Seifert, Ganesh Sivakumar, Naomi So, Catherine Stiles, Supraja Swamy, Diane Villadsen, Michelle Vu, Allika Walvekar, Aileen Wen, Timothy Weng, Anne West and Kenneth Wong.
Students entered this year’s contest by taking the 2009 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Commendations are given to students who post “outstanding” scores and place among the top 50,000 students taking the exam. The top 16,000 in this category go on to be semifinalists.
The Advanced Placement National Scholar awards have been announced and Harker students earned 366 awards in one category or another. Categories range from the AP international diploma, a globally recognized program for students who display exceptional achievement on AP exams across several disciplines, to the AP scholar award for students who receive scores of 3 or higher on three or more AP Exams. Students can qualify for more than one category.
Harker students garnered awards in a several categories. The school has 62 students in the scholar category; 50 students were named scholars with honor for receiving an average score of at least 3.25 on all AP exams takenand scores of 3 or higher on four or more of these exams; 183 students were named scholars with distinction for receiving an average score of at least 3.5 on all AP exams taken and scores of 3 or higher on five or more of these exams; and 71 students were named national scholars (United States) who received an average score of at least 4 on all AP exams taken and scores of 4 or higher on eight or more of these exams. Hearty congratulations to all!
Five Harker students took high honors at the the 13th Po Leung Kuk Primary Mathematics World Contest (PMWC), held in July in Hong Kong. David Zhu and Peter Wu, now grade 6, were on the Silicon Valley team that took first runner-up in the Po Leung Kuk Cup. Cindy Liu, Rachel Wu and David Lin, all now grade 8, helped the East Bay team reach second runner-up.
In individual competition, Liu had a perfect score and won a first place honor, Zhu earned a second place honor and Peter Wu and Rachel Wu won third place honors.
Each student at the competition was selected from two tryout rounds. Both rounds were administered by MathEdge, an organization that trains students in problem-solving and competitive mathematics. The first round attracted 154 students from 76 Bay Area schools. From the first round, 15 were selected to attend a 12-week training camp. Of those 15, eight were selected to compete at the PMWC after a second tryout.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NSMC) recently announced its final round of college-sponsored scholarship winners, and 2010 graduate Patrick Campbell was named the winner of the National Merit Colby College Scholarship. Harker’s first National Merit winner, graduate Sarah Teplitsky, was announced in April. An additional 21 winners, the most in California, were announced in May. Later that month, three more graduates were named in the third round.
Adding to the long list of recent speech and debate accomplishments, the Harker middle school debate team claimed the 2010 National Junior Forensic League championship in Public Forum Debate in late June in Des Moines, Iowa. Based on the school’s cumulative accomplishment across all debate events, coach Steve Clemmons took the stage to collect one of only five School of Excellence in Debate awards bestowed at the tournament. Students will be entering Gr. 9 in the fall unless otherwise noted.
In public forum, debaters evaluated whether current trends in political dialogue compromise meaningful democratic discourse. All three Harker teams advanced to competition in the elimination round bracket. While Stephanie Lu and Maneesha Panja fell in the Octafinal round on a 2-1 decision, Harker’s two other teams, Adarsh Battu and partner Arjun Kumar, along with Claudia Tischler and partner Shilpa Yarlagadda, reached the final round and were thus named co-champions. Tischler and Yarlagadda were also undefeated in preliminary competition.
In Lincoln-Douglas, debaters considered whether inclusion of non-felons in DNA databases is unjust. Travis Chen, advanced to semifinals before falling on a 2-1 decision to the eventual champion. Srikar Pyda and Brian Tuan also both made elimination round competition, falling in Octafinals. Rohith Bhethanabotla and Azhar Huda, Gr. 8 (in the fall) competed valiantly in Lincoln-Douglas debate as well, falling just short of reaching the elimination rounds.
Pulling double-duty at the tournament, Kumar complemented his Public Forum championship by reaching finals in Congressional Debate.
Congratulations also go to Mr. Steve Clemmons, Director of Middle School Forensics. Mr. Jonathan Peele, Director of Upper School Congressional Debate and Individual Events, traveled with the team and served as an assistant coach. Ms. Carol Green, Communication Studies Department Chair and Director of Upper School Public Forum, assisted by working with students to organize practices and enlisting the enthusiastic help of many upper school debaters to lend peer-coaching. The success of our middle school debaters at NJFL Nationals truly demonstrates the power of the unified Harker Forensics Team!
Gr. 4 and Gr. 5 students posted their highest scores ever during Harker’s annual in-house Math League contest in May. This year, 41 fifth-graders had scores of 28 or higher, with 13 students earning perfect scores. Gr. 5 contestants who scored perfectly were: Steven Cao, Ryan Chen, Cuebeom Choi, Rishab Gargeya, Andrew Gu, Conor Martin, Kshithija Mulam, Eric Pei, Divya Rajasekharan, Aneesh Samineni, Austin Tuan, Peter Wu and David Zhu.
The fifth-graders with a score of 28 or 29 were Sana Aladin, Varun Baldwa, Sarah Baz, Brandon Chow, Quentin Delepine, Aditya Dhar, Elan Friedland, Kedar Gupta, Joyce Huang, Emaad Hussain, Aashish Jain, Preethi Kandappan, Alexander Lam, Lauren Liu, Nikhil Manglik, Anuva Mittal, Judy Pan, Albert Pun, Alayna Richmond, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Scott Song, Meilan Steimle, Ed Tischler, Lindsey Trinh, Misha Tseitlin, Derrick Wang and Edmond Wu.
A total of 29 Gr. 4 students scored 28 or higher, with four of them having perfect scores. Perfect scorers in the fourth grade were Adrian Chu, Vivian Huang, Rajiv Movva and Shaya Zarkesh. Students who had scores of 28 or 29 were: Niko Bhatia, Rahul Bhethanabotla, Megan Cardosi, Siddarth Chari, Kate Chow, Griffin Ellis, Rose Guan, Alan Hughes, Julia Huang, Rishi Iyer, Tanay Kamat, Ania Kranz, Jerrica Liao, Edgar Lin, Taylor Kohlmann, Michael Kwan, Victor Shin, Aadith Srinivasan, Sahana Srinivasan, Justin Su, Shushant Thyagoraj, Gary Tsai, Jessica Wang, Roy Yi and Kaitlin Zhu.
[Updated] Harker had five top-three placements in an impressive showing at the international finals of the Future Problem Solvers competition, held the weekend of June 12 in Wisconsin. One middle division team, made up of grade 9 students NaYeon Kim, Maya Sathaye, Hansa Srinivasan and Karan Das-Grande, took first place in action plan presentation.
The other middle division team of Ria Desai, Sonia Gupta, Pooja Shah and Emily Wang, also all grade 9, earned third place in action plan presentation and also finished in 11th place in the booklet competition. The senior team, rising senior Justine Liu and rising juniors Ananth Subramaniam, Jennie Xu and Laura Yau, earned a respectable sixth place in the presentation of action plan contest, although many at the event, including some fellow competitors, felt they should have placed higher. The three teams were among 50 from around the world that participated.
Standout individuals included Shelby Rorabaugh, Gr. 9, who was the first place scenario writer in the middle division; and Joy Li, Gr. 9, and Madhu Nori, Gr. 7, who took second and third place, respectively, as alternates in global issues problem solving. Shivani Mitra, Gr. 9, finished just shy of third place in the same category. In the senior division of alternate global problem solving, sophomore Akshay Tangutur performed well, missing the top three by just 10 points. Rising senior Olivia Zhu took sixth place as an overall individual competitor in the senior division.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) has announced the third of its four rounds of scholarship winners. The first two rounds were corporate-sponsored; this round is the first of the college-sponsored awards. A fourth round will be announced in the summer.
Congratulations to the following recent graduates, who were sponsored by the schools named here: Alexander Creasman (USC), Michael Gendotti (USC) and Connie Lu (University of Chicago).
Last month, Future Problem Solvers (FPS) had 54 students qualify for the Future Problem Solving Program of California’s state tournament. They went on to earn high honors in all divisions at the San Diego event.
Harker teams swept the board, winning first, second and third places in most divisions. Of those who received honors, three teams and four individuals will be representing Harker in the international finals June 10-13 in Wisconsin.
Harker had the record for the largest delegation from one school at the state finals.
The FPS program aims to challenge students to come up with creative problem solving. The students develop critical thinking skills by using imagination and classroom skills to solve problems in today’s world.
In San Diego, students were asked to solve an aquaculture food-distribution crisis. In a two-hour span, students wrote a 15-page document outlining the challenges, the underlying problem and different solutions. Harker students proposed various ideas, from a dynamic change in school curriculum to a complex international antitrust agency.
Teacher Cyrus Merrill, head advisor of FPS, would like to thank the assistant coaches, computer science teacher Susan King and communication studies teacher Steve Clemmons for being an instrumental part of the students’ success.
Merrill would also like to personally recognize the senior team, who have placed first in presentation of their action plan throughout their high school career. Merrill thanks the team for setting an example for others in leadership and creative thinking. “They have qualified for internationals every year since seventh grade,” Merrill said. “They will be sorely missed.”