Magnet News: Winter 2010

Magnet students won many awards this fall:

• • Magnet seniors Ajay Kannan, Shilpa Kannan, Jed Tan, Monica Ly, Lani Matthews, Robert Ullman, Sandra Yan, and Thomas Zhang were named Maryland Distinguished Scholar Finalists.

  • Magnet Seniors Andrew Das Sarma, Shilpa Kannan, Nilay Kumar, and Winston Liu were Semifinalists in the 2010 Siemens Competition.

  • Magnet Seniors James Pinkerton and Rafael Setra won Third Place at the National Finals of the 2010 Siemens Competition. They will share a total of $46,000 in scholarship money.

  • The Blair I team of Andrew Das Sarma '11, Andy Gilbert '12, Jason Hyun '13, and Diwakaran Ilangovan '13 won first place in the team Colonial Bowl competition at the Colonial Math Challenge at George Washington University on October 29, 2010. They competed against teams from DC, Virginia, Maryland, and PA. All students took the individual Colonial I exam with the top 50 students moving on to take the Colonial II exam. Andrew Das Sarma scored in the top 5 of all students on the Colonial I exam. Andrew Das Sarma, Brendan Berger '12, Jason Hyun, Andy Gilbert, Diwakaran Ilangovan and Jessica Shi '14 won $80,000 scholarships by scoring in the top 10 in the Colonial II exam (pdf).

  • Magnet Junior Nina "Jessica" Lu won second place and a $10,000 scholarship in the 2010 Junior Achievement Essay Competition.

  • Magnet Junior Charles Argue won third place in the 2010 University of Maryland Mathematics Competition.

Blair teachers are also developing new magnet classes for next year: Logic, Entomology, and Organic Chemistry.