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Students take top honors at National Economics Challenge state round
Courtesy of Samuel Lepler
Three NEC teams from the upper school pose in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The Northern California state competition was held on April 4.
April 11, 2016
Three teams of upper school juniors and seniors competed in the Northern California Adam Smith division of the National Economics Challenge (NEC) at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on April 4.
After taking an initial online testing round to qualify for the state division event, teams of four students competed in individual and group multiple-choice rounds as well as a quiz bowl section in San Francisco. Question topics included microeconomics, macroeconomics, international economics and current events.
“After [the written rounds] we were ranked first, and it put us in a good position for the buzzer section because there’s a little bit of stress with it because you need to buzz in but then have the right answer,” Team Harker 13 member Jasmine Liu (12) said. “There were some weird questions that definitely came up, so those were just dependent on if we knew it or if we had the practical knowledge to try to figure it out, but in general it’s just having basic [economics] knowledge and general knowledge of world events.”
Team Harker 13, which comprises seniors Grace Guan, Abhinav Ketineni, Adele Li and Jasmine, took first place at the event and will take the national semifinal exam on April 26.
“We actually went [to the NEC state round] last year as Anikaswagmoney, which was our old team name, and we placed third, which was good, but we really hoped we could get more, so this year was a nice comeback as seniors with direct preparation to take first,” Abhinav said. “We’re going to study more for [the semifinal round]. It’s pretty competitive, though, so our chances are pretty slim, but hopefully we’ll pull through.”
The teams In High Demand, consisting of juniors Joyce Huang, Taylor Iantosca, Emaad Raghib and Priyanka Taneja, and The Visible Hands, which comprised seniors Samali Sahoo, Alice Wu, Daphne Yang and Michael Zhao, also competed at the event but did not qualify for the semifinals.
“The third round kind of hurt a couple of our teams a little bit, but they were aggressive in the quiz bowl, and I was really proud of all three teams. They did really well,” Economics teacher and NEC coach Samuel Lepler said. “Anything that is on the AP exam is fair game, and certainly you want to master that and master it to be able to do it quickly, but that’s only really the first step. Of course, winning is cool, and it looks good, but for me personally, as a teacher, winning is the cherry on top of participation. I’d much prefer to get a lot of people involved and excited to dive in.”
If Team Harker 13 wins the semifinals, it will proceed to the national finals to compete for the national championship in New York City from May 20 to May 23.
