Todd Rope strode into Harrison High School for the first time in almost a week. He had visited his dream college, the California Institute of Technology, and sported a white Caltech sweatshirt that had a likeness of Albert Einstein on it as proof. Then he found out about his Michigan Math Prize Competition score--a reason why Green & Gold Digest thinks his own likeness should be on that shirt instead. It was high enough to land him in the top 100 in the state, and thus, he was invited to a statewide awards banquet, held on February 24 at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.
The Michigan Math Prize Competition is divided into two separate parts. Part I is a 40-problem test, and only the top 5% get to go on to Part II, which consists of 5 very tough college-level problems. For 1989, the minimum score required to advance to part II was 21.
The overall score for the MMPC is taken by multiplying the Part II score by 1.2, then adding it to the Part I score. Rope, who had Harrison High's best Part I score with 32 points, scored 31.2 points (26 times 1.2) on the second part to become the first HHS student to make the top 100 in the state since Mark Schiefsky ('87) in 1986.
Rope didn't show a great deal of elation, but the same could not be said for Mrs. Sue Schultz, who was his 12th Grade Advanced Placement Math teacher in 1988-89. Dana Apfelblat, who also made Part II and also had Mrs. Schultz for A.P.M. 12, recalled Mrs. Schultz exclaiming, "You made it, sweetheart!" and giving a big hug to the student with top score in the whole Farmington School District.
Jim Cannon, the next-highest scorer in the district, missed out on the banquet by one point--his total score was 49 and he needed 50. What's more, because Rope outscored him in Part I, 32-31, Cannon was also denied the chance to become the HHS Class of 1990's top Part I scorer in all four years; otherwise, Cannon would have been bestowed with a special award.
At the banquet, Rope got a Bronze Award (a bronze medal) for being in the Top 50, along with a $350 scholarship. Only sixteen students garnered higher awards--Gold Awards went to the top five, and Silver Awards went to those finishing between 6th and 16th.
In addition to Rope, Cannon and Apfelblat, two other seniors got to take the Part II test based on their performance in Part I (Dan Fulga and Mark Rabinowitz), and so did junior Shaw Brown, who admitted to having made more than a few lucky guesses. Fulga strengthened his third-place standing with 12 Part II points. Rabinowitz and Apfelblat struggled with Part II; Apfelblat outscored Rabinowitz, 6-3.6. Finally, Brown added 2.4 points to his total.
Three weeks before the banquet, Rope refuted the idea stated in the first paragraph of this article--that his face should be on a Caltech sweatshirt--by arguing that if you took the top 100 students from each state, the resulting 5000 would overfill Caltech a number of times over. He concluded, "The point I'm making is, being in the top 100 in the state does not put my face on this shirt at all."
Still, he did get accepted to Caltech in March. He may have second thoughts in the idea now.
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