California Learning Center Dominates at National Tournament

November 8th is STEM day.

That same day, students from the Cupertino-based math-learning center Random Math won a major title as Champions of the Harvard-MIT Mathematics tournament, placing fourth overall. And Nilay Mishra won first place in the individual theme round and fifth place overall.

“I am sure this win will prove to even young students that it is never too early to achieve higher goals and knowledge in mathematics,” said Random Math Chief Operating Officer Manish Mishra. “Specifically, I see students at Random Math, now setting up higher goals for themselves.”

He said this kind of confidence will prepare them for a possible career in STEM later down the road. But right now, the middle and high schoolers are just celebrating their win:

“The competition was very fun, especially the guts round where we got second place,”said Nikash Gupta, an eigth-grader. He said he felt incredibly prepared for the math challenges and thinks it was uniquely Random Math teaching that got him there. In fact, the students spent more than 25 hours leading up to the competition working on their math skills and team coordination.

“On the team round, we solved the first eight problems, which got us to seventh place. We managed to improve on the guts round, and got second place,” said Kavan Doctor, a ninth grader. “The driving factor of our win was our team coordination as we spent many hours working together to improve our strategy and team work. Thus, I enjoy being at Random Math because of the superb quality of teaching and the presence of peers with a similar level of knowledge, experience, and work ethic,”

Overall, the Random Math team won fourth place overall amongst more than 130 high school teams (more than 800 students) from across the globe, including students from the Russian School of Math and Phillips Academy. In addition to this, the team secured 2nd place in “Guts Round” and 7th place in “Team Round.”

The Random Math team was made up of 3 middle school students and 3 freshmen:

· Advaith Avadhanam (8)

· Nikash Gupta (8)

· Nikhil Mathihalli (8)

· Amol Rama (9)

· Kavan Doctor (9)

· Nilay Mishra (9)

Now that the tournament is over, the students may be celebrating but they’re also getting right back to work, preparing for the next challenge.

You can learn more about Random Math online.