The Avid Learner

Eric K. Larson of Eugene, OR, was awarded a US$50,000 scholarship for The Classification of Certain Fusion Categories.
Nityan Nair of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, was awarded US$40,000 scholarship for Diffraction with a twist: Forming fractional optical vortices using spiral zone plates.
Ashok Cutkosky of Columbia, MO, was awarded US$20,000 for Associated Primes of the Square of the Alexander Dual of Hypergraphs.
Hayden C. Metsky of Millburn, NJ, was awarded US$10,000 for Improving Statistical Machine Translation Through Template-based Phrase-table Extensions.

In the Teams category Erika Debenedictis and Duanni (Tony) Huang of Albuquerque, NM, were awarded US$40,000 for Optimizing the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Algorithm for Multi-Core Processors, and Raphael-Joel (RJ) Lim of Indianapolis, IN, and Mark Zhang of Sugar Land, TX, received US$20,000 for Previously Unknown Parts of the Greene-Kleitman Partition for the Tamari Lattice.

To learn more, read the list of all winners in the competition, with biographical information and more details on their projects at the Siemens website.

2009 Intel Science Talent Search Finalists Announced

Forty high school seniors were recently named Finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search 2009. Established in 1942, this research-based competition is America's oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition. Over 1,600 projects were entered this year. The top 300 applicants were chosen as Semifinalists and the top 40 became the Finalists. New York has the most Finalists with nine, followed by California with five and New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin with three each.

Nitish Lakhanpal, a senior from University High School in Irvine, is one of the forty Finalists. He created an algorithm for predicting one aspect of protein structure called beta structures for the competition under bioinformatics and genomics category. As a Finalist, Nitish was awarded $5,000 scholarship, a notebook computer, plus an expense-paid trip in March to Washington, D.C., to compete for the top ten spots.

Three local students were also named Semifinalists. They include Patel Sachin from Troy High School in Fullerton, Lidia Liang from Arnold Beckman High School in Irvine, and Pooja Desai from Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo. To learn more, please visit Intel STS.

University of California to Eliminate SAT II Requirements

University of California regents ease admission rules to expand applicant pool for fall 2012. Under the new rules, the UC system no longer requires SAT II Subject tests, but still requires SAT or ACT, 15 UC-approved college prep courses and a minimum of 3.0 GPA.

The changes are aimed at shifting the adimission process away from favoring affluent students from suburban schools. However, many critics have viewed the changes as a watering-down of admission standards. The changes increase the application pools for UCs at a time the available admission spots are actually reduced by 6% (2,30 spaces) due to state budget cut. Consequently, the changes will make the UCs admission much more competitive.

There are concerns that the policy may reduce the numbers of Asian American students admitted to UC due to the ease in academic stardards in favor of other criteria. To learn more, please read LA TIme article: UC regents ease admission rules to expand applicant pool.

Some Top Schools Reject College Board's SAT Score Choice

Designed to reduce student stress, according to the College Board, Score Choice has become an option to the current SAT score-reporting policy in 2008. This new policy allows students to choose the SAT scores by sitting (test date) and SAT Subject Test scores by individual test that they send to colleges. The policy is optional, and if students choose not to use it, all scores will be sent automatically.

Recently, some top universities have explicitly rejected the College Board's Score Choice program based on the view that such system will put low-income students at a disadvantage. Thus, those universities who opt out will continue to request all of an applicant's SAT scores. So far, Harvard, MIT, and the Universityof Chicago have accepted the policy, while Yale, Stanford, the Universityof Pennsylvania, Cornell, USC, and Pomona continue to require all scores. Other colleges including Princeton plan to reach a decision soon. To learn more, please read Newsweek's article: The New SAT Score Policy: Tiny Loophole, Big Shock?

	Mathematicians Top Best Jobs in America
Despite of the economic downturn, the mathematician has landed at the top spot on a new study ranking the best and worst jobs in the U.S. According to a recent article published by Wall Street Journal, mathematicians fared best among 200 professions based on five criteria: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress. Now, students have more reasons to study hard for math.

I hope you enjoyed the information provided in this newsletter. Thank you for supporting gifted education in Southern California. If you have comments to improve our newsletters or would like to share articles, resources and ideas with our community, please email me at Dr.Li@AvidAcademy.com.

Sincerely,

James Li, Ph.D.

Executive Director
Avid Academy for Gifted Youth