Middle school math students had a great showing at a the Santa Clara chapter Mathcounts contest, held Feb. 16 at the upper school campus. A team of four grade 8 students – Riya Gupta, Ashley Hu, Connie Jiang and Sally Zhu – took first place in the team portion of the event, repeating last year’s success. They will appear at the state-level competition, to be held March 23 at Stanford University.

In individual competition, eighth grader Rohan Bhowmik took second place overall, winning a tiebreaker over Ashley Hu, who placed third. Both had a score of 44 out of 46 points. Other notable placers were Sally Zhu in fifth place with 43 points, seventh grader Ethan Liu in seventh place with 42 points, Angelina Hu in 10th place with 41 points, Riya Gupta in 12th place with 40 points, Connie Jiang in 13th with 40 points (after a tie-breaking decision based on which problems each student solved) and seventh grader Emma Gao in 16th with 38 points. Bhowmik and Liu also qualified for the state competition.

A total of 112 students from 14 schools were present at the contest, which is believed to be one of the toughest chapter-level competitions in the country. “This is a highly competitive chapter as can be seen … with every point differential,” said middle school math department chair Vandana Kadam. “It is commendable that eight Harker students placed in the top 16.”