Article Text
Four Langley High School juniors placed third in the National Economics Challenge after demonstrating their command of economic theory, current events and real-world problem-solving.
Jason Wu, Arav Sobhani, Tanish Reddy Gottimukkula and Arnav Khetarpal represented Langley during the two-day competition at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. The event, hosted by the Council for Economic Education, brought together 16 high school teams from 11 states.
Competitors faced challenging questions about microeconomics, macroeconomics and current global economic developments. Langley advanced to the national finals after competing against several state championship teams during the school year.
The students finished as second runner-up in the David Ricardo Division, which is reserved for first-time participants who have completed no more than one economics course.
In the opening round, teams received an economic problem and developed a solution. They presented their work through a slideshow before answering questions from judges.
Jason said the exercise showed how economic ideas extend beyond the classroom.
“At the end of the day, you think that economics is purely theoretical, but when you really do these critical thinking routes, and you see the applications in real life, you can see that economics is just everywhere in real life,” he said.
Their presentation earned them a place in the second round, where the four remaining teams competed in a quiz bowl and had only 20 seconds to answer each question.
The Langley students divided their preparation by subject. Tanish and Arnav concentrated on microeconomics and macroeconomics, while Arav and Jason followed current events, including recent Federal Reserve headlines.
“I feel like our comprehensive study process really showed with the end results,” Tanish said.
The team also drew on lessons from economics courses at Langley. Virginia is among 22 states that require an economics course for high school graduation, according to the Council for Economic Education’s biennial Survey of the States.
Arnav said social media videos initially helped spark his interest in economics, but Langley’s AP Macro-Micro Economics course deepened that enthusiasm.
“I saw my thoughts flourish when I got to take AP Macro-Micro this year,” he said. “We had a wonderful teacher, and he was definitely a spark in my Econ passion.”
Tanish, who took the same course, called it “the main reason we made it this far,” noting that microeconomics and macroeconomics make up a large part of the competition.
As they prepare to enter their senior year, the students hope to share what they learned and build a stronger economics community at Langley.
“What we want to do is revive this love for economics at our school,” Jason said. “We definitely want to foster this kind of community at our school and maybe create a club.”