Submitted by: Tom Clymer Director of Academic Competitions National Assessment & Testing
Pleasanton’s Amador Valley High School has some of the best high-school mathematicians in the country, as demonstrated by their 7th-place finish in the 2012 Fall Startup Event, a national mathematics contest administered by National Assessment & Testing (http://www.natassessment.com). Coach Arick Little prepared students for the first major competition of the academic year, in which students worked furiously for thirty minutes, racing to answer one hundred problems in a variety of mathematical topics. With so many questions and so little time, competitors must not only have strong mathematical skills, but also be able to quickly decide which problems to solve and which to skip.
After results from students across the nation were processed, several Amador
Valley High School students received individual awards, helping their team to
place 7th in the nation. In the Middle School division, Steve Guo placed
2nd, Yash Chitgopekar was 18th, and Jonathan Yang placed 24th. In the
9th-grade division, Joseph Mo placed 4th and Rahul Gupta was 21st. In the
11th-grade division, Eugene Chen placed 2nd, Akshay Ravikumar was 15th, Ian
Zhou placed 16th, and Christine Xu finished in 17th-place. National
Assessment & Testing’s next contests are the 2012 Team Scramble on November 8th and the 2012 Ciphering Time Trials on December 13th.
National Assessment & Testing administers high-quality mathematics
competitions that high schools can participate in through the mail. Their
contests cover a variety of formats, including individual and team tests, as
well as a variety of difficulties, from one hundred easy problems in thirty
minutes to fifteen complex problems in one week.
