Amador Valley High School Places 5th in National Math Contest

PLEASANTON, CA- Pleasanton’s Amador Valley High School has some of the best high-school mathematicians in the country, as demonstrated by their 5th- place finish in the 2015 Fall Startup Event, a national mathematics contest administered by National Assessment & Testing. 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.

According to Tom Clymer, the director of the competition, “It’s a lot like a musician practicing scales.” 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 5th in the nation. In the 9th-grade division, Jeffrey Li and Rohith Sajith placed 2nd and 12th respectively. In the 10th-grade division, Jonathan Yang placed 16th and Kevin Gao was 24th. Rahul Gupta placed 19th in the 12th-grade division.

Amador Valley High School will not be participating in National Assessment & Testing’s other contests this year, the 2015 Ciphering Time Trials on December 12th and 2016 Four-by-Four Competition on February 4th. Each of these contests features ten rounds in which students have three minutes to answer problems, but the first requires students to work individually on three problems per round, while the second allows teams of four to tackle four problems in each round.

National Assessment & Testing administers high-quality mathematics competitions that high schools can participate in by e-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.

See Also:

• Pleasanton High Schools Ranked Among Top in California

Announcement submitted by National Assessment & Testing

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