USC students excel at state math challenge
April 16, 2021
USC students excel at state math challenge
Fort Couch Middle School placed third in Pennsylvania and first in the region in both the seventh and eighth grade competitions, among 28 and 29 school respectively.
Five Fort Couch seventh graders earned among Pennsylvania’s top 50 scores including Luke An, Jeffery Zhang, Arth Italiya, Kaia Petrick, William Whitman. Eighth graders achieving scores in the top 45 include Jamie Barrett, Eitan Schwartz, Yuhong Shi, Ishaan Sharma and Sophia Whitman.
Boyce Middle School sixth graders placed fourth among 39 schools in Pennsylvania and first among schools in the region. Of the top five individual scores in the region, four were earned by Boyce Middle School students.
Among the top 47 scores earned by sixth graders, 12 (25 percent) are Boyce students – more than double any other participating school. Top scorers include Molly Biedrzycki, Jackson Galbraith, Jonah Zahalsky, Emma Eannarino, Nithya Kommineni, Gavin Morse, Rohan Inampudi, Joshua Beitler and Harish Rajaganapathy; as well as three fifth graders who participated in the sixth-grade competition – John Whitman, Joseph Wyse and Cynthia Shen.
Middle school students were given 30 minutes to solve 35 questions – ranging from simple and straightforward to complex math problems. The school’s team score – comprised of the school’s top five scores – is reported to the PML.
At the high school level, PML consists of six contests each year, administered once a month (October through March) with six questions per contest. Problems draw from a wide range of high school topics, including geometry, algebra, trigonometry, logarithms, series, sequences, exponents, roots, integers, real numbers, combinations, probability, and coordinate geometry. Each six-question contest has a 30-minute time limit. The last two questions on each contest are more difficult than the first four, with the final question being intended to challenge the very best mathematics students.
Upper St. Clair High School was the second highest scoring school among the 13 participating high schools in Allegheny County and 10th among the 65 schools in Pennsylvania. Alex Sun, grade 9; Christian Chiu, grade 12; and Daniel J. Wang, grade 11, were recognized as high scoring students in the commonwealth.
The PML specializes in conducting math contests designed to stimulate student interest and confidence in mathematics.
