Students place 11th in nation
By Jenny Jiao, ’16
For the third year in a row, AP Economics teacher Scott Shinaberry’s students have qualified and competed in the National Economics Challenge.
Sponsored by the Council for Economic Education, the competition tests high schoolers’ knowledge of economic theory, current events and real-life application.
The preliminary competition included an online test, while the semi-finals were a series of on-paper tests administered by a proctor.
Junior Roshan Sivakumar and sophomores Mark Malkin, Allen Hu and Jonathan Wang won the National Wildcard round to qualify to compete in the national semi-finals.
They competed on April 26, and placed 11th out of 34 participating states.
Malkin explains the hard work and dedication that helped his team prepare for the competition.
“We studied all the concepts listed on the practice exams every day and also created a 500-line Excel document with every macro data index available,” Malkin said.
He said the experience was exciting, but extremely difficult.
“We were all very excited to learn we qualified for nationals, but engaging in the semifinals was stressful,” Malkin said. “We learned that preparation may not always be enough to win the entire thing. While we were excited to get 11th, we were still quite far off our goal of 4th place”
Shinaberry, who encourages his students to participate every year, was elated to continue the streak of success for the third year.
“It’s a great honor that for three years in a row, our students have qualified for the semi-finals,” Shinaberry said. “Our next step is to keep improving and hopefully make it to the finals in New York City.”