Dr. Susan Brockman shares that this year, 34 students at different grade levels and with differing amounts of prior experience participated in the Open Round of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad in January. Some of these students had been practicing with little teacher input (their choice!) since September. Three of our students, Ben Avrahami, Jeffrey Wu, and Ethan Morgan, made it into the Invitational round, where the two national teams for the USA are chosen, along with a Canadian team, for the International Linguistics Olympiad. This put these students in the top 10% in the US and Canada.
While none of our three made the International team, Dr. Brockman and all of us at Stuy congratulate all of them. Ethan Morgan's score put him in the top 20% of students at the Invitational level; he would have achieved an alternate slot on the Canadian team! Ethan also had the 2nd highest score on the NACLO of any student who participated this year in New York State! Bravo, Ethan! It is Dr. Brockman’s hope that these students can inspire others to participate in this fascinating competition which draws on parts of the brain that intersect with coding, pattern analysis, language ability, problem solving—many other skills that are certainly challenging and fun.
