Middle/High School Math Contest Sets Participation Record
Virtual Offering Provides Opportunity for Out-of-State and International Students
It was a record-breaking and successful year for Department of Mathematics annual math competition. The event had the greatest number of exams ever taken and the most schools participating in its history.
The University of Houston Math Contest, held on January 29, gave middle and high school students the opportunity to test their knowledge by competing against other students for free. Since 2005, the contest has been held on the UH campus, but due to the pandemic, moved online for the past two years.
The breakdown of participation for 2022 includes:
- 882 students
- 130 distinct teams (including 122 schools, 5 home schools and 3 math or tutoring centers)
- 1,497 exams
- 10 countries
- 18 states outside Texas
Students participating outside the U.S. were in Canada, England, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Portugal, South Korea, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
“With COVID, people are looking for virtual opportunities they didn’t look for before,” said Jennifer Marsala, math contest organizer and mathematics instructional designer.
Participation when the math contest was in person averaged about 920 exams taken and 70 schools.
Smacking Down the Competition
Students can compete in more than one exam with tests offered in algebra 1 and 2, geometry, precalculus, calculus, statistics, physics, calculator use and number sense.
This year, the top-performing school was Clements High School in Fort Bend ISD, followed by Dulles High School also in FBISD and a third-place tie between Seven Lakes High School in Katy ISD and Vestavia Hills High School in Alabama.
Aryan Arora, a 10th grade student from Clements, won the contest’s signature Smackdown competition against 256 students. It is the last event of the day and is an elimination round. Questions are projected on the screen to participants and observers through Zoom. Each question has a time limit not surpassing 30 seconds. Students who answer correctly stay in the competition.
“I was pretty nervous,” Arora said, “because not long after the competition began, it came down to just three of us. We kept getting the questions right. We didn’t know who was going to win. There were three people for many rounds. Then, it went down to two people and then one person.”
Arora received a $100 Amazon gift card for winning first place. He also won fourth place in Number Sense and third place in Physics. First through sixth place winners received Amazon gift cards ranging from $100–$20.
Strong Showing from Fort Bend ISD
Since the math contest’s inception, Fort Bend ISD has been represented among the winners. Clements took the spot of top-performing school at the first competition in 2005; it has won first place 13 times.
“Really strong private high schools have come to the competition in the past intending to blow everyone out of the water,” said Jeff Morgan, contest organizer and associate provost of education innovation and technology. “Clements has just kicked everybody’s butt.”
Fort Bend ISD has been represented among the top three winners every year.
Ricardo Garcia, calculus high school teacher at Clements, teaches many of the high performers. He was the first graduate of teachHOUSTON, NSM’s STEM teacher preparation program. Ironically, as a student at the University, he used to volunteer at the Math Contest.
“I am extremely proud of my students,” he said. “They continue to amaze me with their hard work and dedication to learning math and doing well at competitions.”
Hybrid Event Planned for 2023
Key math competition organizers included Melahat Almus, Morgan, Marsala, Jay Walia, James West and Blerina Xhabli.
“These are all people who are passionate about instruction who love to see students succeed,” said Morgan. “It’s just a natural thing for us to want to do. We want to see good students compete, and we want to see them do well.”
The organizers plan to make the contest hybrid next year, with in-person and virtual offerings.
Rebeca Trejo, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics