2015 MATHCOUNTS Competition Series Chapter Competition
The drought seemed to be over when the rains came down on Friday the 6th, but 404 students from 48 schools showed up anyway on Saturday February 7th at San Jose State University. After a few morning showers, they were rewarded with some clear skies and some very tough math problems. When the final scores were tallied, Miller Middle School of San Jose came out in first place, led by a perfect individual score posted by 6th grader David Hu. His teammates 8th graders Austin Lei and Stanley Wang, and 6th grader Jonathan Huang were close behind; when they tallied a perfect team score, they claimed first place. The second place team slot went to Redwood School of Saratoga, with 7th graders Nevin Liang and Brandon Wang, and 8th graders Catherine Wu and Michael Zhang. 3rd place Hyde Middle School of Cupertino featured 8th graders Rohan Cutinha, Ralph Wang, and Daniel Zhang, with 7th grader Rohit Cutinha. This was Hyde's best placement in the competition since 2005. 4th place went to Lawson Middle School, with team members Harmony He, Ishika Shah, Ethan Guo, and Timothy Poon taking Lawson to its best placement ever, and first time advancing to the State competition. 5th place went to John F. Kennedy School of Cupertino, with team members Eric Huang, Michael Wang, Jonathan Zhou, and Kevin Oh. 6th place was Hopkins Junior High of Fremont, with members Jonathan Ko, Michael Ren, Brent Liu, and Thomas Chen, and the final slot for team qualifying went to The Harker School of San Jose, with team members Cynthia Chen, Rose Guan, Jeffrey Kwan, and Katherine Tian.
The individual title had to be decided by a tiebreaker round, as there were two perfect scorers tied after regulation. Michael Wang of Kennedy defeated David Hu of Miller, claiming the individual title. 3rd place was a dead heat between Stanley Wang of Miller and Eric Huang of Kennedy. The Northern California MATHCOUNTS Championship is scheduled for Saturday March 21st, at Stanford University in Palo Alto; the Southern California Championship will be at UC Irvine. These seven top scoring teams qualified to advance to the State Competition. In addition to the advancing teams, 7 top scoring "Independents" qualified: Jacob Nie (as an individual participant) from Kennedy, Stan Zhang of Magnolia Science Academy (Santa Clara); Jocelin Su of Chaboya (San Jose); Matthew Guo of BASIS Independent Silicon Valley (San Jose); Edward He of Bret Harte (San Jose); and Nikhil Isukapalli and Jeffrey Liu of Thornton Junior High (Fremont).
The Countdown Round scoring did not count in determining any qualifiers for the State Competition, but it gave a chance for 193 of our competitors to show off their nerves, Math knowledge, and reflexes in front of the audience of 500. Stan Zhang of Magnolia came out 1st, ahead of Brandon Wang of Redwood in the finale; with Stanley Wang of Miller 3rd place, and David Hu of Miller 4th.
See below Press Summary; and Countdown Round results for further details.
