Eight students from Munster High School have qualified to compete in the National MathCON 2017 Finals, along with 20 Honorable Mention recognitions. There were approximately 50,000 online round participants from across the country. MathCON is a prestigious academic competition hosted by Concept Schools every year in Chicago during April.
Students nationwide from all types of schools, including home-schooled children, in the middle and upper grades compete across several mathematical disciplines: algebra, geometry, measurement, data analysis, number systems and pre-calculus. They take an online assessment to qualify and compete in the finals at the University of Illinois at Chicago going head to head—brain to brain.
Among the 576 finalists chosen to complete in the national math completion was James Krieg, Stephen Heritage, and Fenry Zhou, grade 8, Ann Ostojic and Collin Garmon, grade 9, Evan Krieg and Shreyas Iyer, grade 10 and James McKeever, grade 11.
Students from 43 states took the initial exam to qualify for MathCON. The day-long event will bring together both elementary and high school students to compete for various prizes and national prestige through various math questions and activities.
Honorable Mentions placing in the 99th percentile were awarded to Emily Shu, Sydney Foster, Euna Lee, Saranya Sanaka, Anya Fitzpatrick, Isaiah Rosinski, Kathir Venkat, David Bastos, Timothy Giannini, William McComis, Nicholas Larson, Jonathan Harris, Kali Konstantinopoulos, Rebecca Dodgson, Zachary Dong, Michael Hrinda, Patrick Wu, Matthew Kvasnica, Anna Whitney, and Nirav Patwari
MathCON was created in 2008 by Concept Schools as a Midwest competition with just 125 participants, and has since grown to a national event. MathCON’s goal is to engage students in STEM outside of the classroom, and encourage more students to enter the STEM fields, which are currently some of the fastest-growing industries in the United States.
“MathCON is our way of inspiring the future leaders in science, technology, math and engineering by engaging students at a young age, making STEM fun and demonstrating its real-world applications,” said Ayhan Caputlu, Director of Mathematics Education at Concept Schools, which organizes the event. “The competition allows us to reach students from all over the nation and help them establish, improve and maintain skills that can lead to many possibilities throughout their educational careers and beyond.”
In addition to the finals testing, students at this year’s competition will enjoy a math comedy show, a pizza party with other participants, while also having the chance to play anarray of STEM-related games. For a full agenda, visit mathcon.org.