Middle school math students see success in spring competitions

Harker middle school math students had a series of successes this past spring. Angela Liu, grade 8, placed in the top 20 at the national Mathcounts competition, held May 8-10. Liu competed as one of four representatives from California, considered the most competitive state. California placed second overall in the competition. Liu was one of three Harker middle school students to reach the state finals, along with eighth graders Jacqueline Huang and Jonny Xue. Harker’s Mathcounts students were coached by Vandana Kadam, middle school math department chair, who was California team coach in 2020.

Mathcounts also hosts a video contest, in which Harker was a top four finalist. Eighth graders Jacqueline Huang, Juliana Li, Kashish Priyam and Sophia Zhu’s video, “Banking on Math,” was the first video Harker had ever submitted for the competition. 

Earlier in spring, the 20th annual Diana Nichols Harker Math Invitational for grades 6-8, held March 21, was a highly successful event with 17 schools and about 432 contestants taking part in the individual and team contests. There were 79 competing and 15 non-competing teams for the team contest.

In individual competition at the sixth grade level, Haofang Zhu took first place, Claire Tian placed third and Sylvia Chen placed fourth. At the eighth grade level, Julian Li placed third and Aarush Vailaya, Agastya Ravuri and Jeremy Peng tied for fourth. 

In team competition, Harker teams took the top three spots at the sixth grade level, with team 6A (Sylvia Chen, Risa Chokhawala, Rohan Goyal, Raeanne Li, Iona Liu, Aaron Luo and Claire Tian) placing first, 6C (Nyssa Kansal, Brandon Labio, Lucas Lum, Lily Peng, Sanjith Senthil, Sri Srinavasan and Graham Zhang) placing second and 6B (Audrey Hu, Shamik Khowala, Ridhan Randheri, Axel Szolusha, Nathan Yee, Haofang Zhu and Ellie Zhou) placing third. At the grade 7 level, Harker team 7A (Jaden Fu, Jessica Hu, Brenna Ren, Caden Ruan, Lily Shi, Kallie Wang and Tiffany Zhu) took third place. At the grade 8 level Harker Team 8A (Audrey Cheng, Neil Krishnan, Juliana Li, Kashish Priyam, Aarush Vailaya, Jessica Wang and Alex Zhong) placed second, while team 8A (Ainslie Chen, Tiffany Gu, Katerina Matta, Jeremy Peng, Agastya Ravuri, Max Zhai and Sophia Zhu) placed third.