Two dozen students took the qualification exam for the International Linguistics Olympiad and five qualified for the next round. In addition, last summer, junior Erik Andersen was named a member of the United States’ team which competed in Pittsburgh, Penn. Anderson, whose interest in linguistics began in grade 8, said, “The problems in the invitational rounds are more difficult and require the participants to explain their answers using linguistic theory.” His sixth place finish automatically qualified him to continue to compete in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad events, most recently in an open round which was held last month for the first time at Harker, in Nichols Hall. The other five qualifiers are Nitya Mani, grade 9;  Katie Siegel, grade 12; Rahul Sridhar, grade 10; Ramya Rangan, grade 12; and Kevin Zhu, grade 10, and all will go on to compete against the top 149 students in North America for slots on the final team.