From May 16th to 22nd, 22 SHSID students from both 7th and 8th grade along with Ms. Shen, Mr. Shen, and Ms. Yao traveled to Omaha, Nebraska for the USAP Finals. Along with having fun with their friends, they achieved great success in this competition. Both the 7th and 8th grade teams won team championships.

USAP stands for ‘United States Academic Pentathlon’. It is one of the most supreme academic competitions in the US. Its vision is to provide all students the opportunity to excel academically through team competition. Students who take part in this competition need to learn and compete in 5 different subjects, including Math, Science, Social Science, Fine Art, and Literature. The topic for this year’s competition is Africa.

The first part of the USAP final— the objective tests— took place on the morning of May 18th. Each objective test was composed of 50 multiple choice questions, in which the students entered their answers into their clickers. After the objective test, they went to watch the movie ‘Spiderman: Homecoming’. In the afternoon, they had the Super Quiz. The 7th graders did very well in this part and won the International Teams Championship. The next day, they took part in the the award ceremony, allowing their hard work to be recognized.

This is the second time that Middle School SHSID students have entered the final round, and they made huge breakthroughs. The team won over 100 medals in total with most of the students winning awards for individual overall score. Both the 7th and 8th grade teams’ overall score ranked the highest among all the other teams, winning two championship trophies for the school.

Congratulations to these students! For them, taking part in this USAP competition is not only an unforgettable experience, but also a part of a lifetime journey harvesting growth and improvements.

(Written by Emma Li 8(2) Supervised by Ms. Gu Pictures by Ms. Shen)