High School Terminal 2022

Correlation One hosted its first-ever High School Terminal competition, in partnership with Citadel and Citadel Securities.

Despite it being the first time interacting with students at the high school level, we had nearly a hundred students from high schools all across North America participate in the week-long competition. 

Speaking with Harvey Blumm, the internship/opportunity coordinator at Stuyvesant High School in New York, he shared how important it is to organize competitions like this for high school students in order to allow them to gain exposure and experience starting at the high school level. He said, “high school students love to put their academic and theoretical learning to practical use, and the structure of Terminal maximized their chance to do just that…and to learn

additional technical and collaborative skills.”

The economy’s radical transformation brought about by technological advancements has significantly impacted the market for qualified talent. In particular, with changes happening in almost every industry, companies will need skills learned at a younger age, pushing the identification of top talent to much earlier stages. Today, high schoolers, and even middle schoolers, are so exposed to the data and tech world that the sheer number of quantitative talent of the younger generation is increasing at rapid rates. According to Blumm, “Computer Science is a hugely popular field among [Stuyvesant’s] student body.”

However, despite the quantitative talent among high school students being quite high, there has not been enough work done on the business side to interact with and cultivate this talent. While university students have more competitions, events, and info sessions regularly organized for them, high school students comparatively lack these opportunities. This is especially problematic given that these students need resources like these in order to succeed in the data-driven economy of the 21st century before they begin their university life and career. Therefore, the High School Terminal competition aimed at increasing significance to provide these opportunities for high school students as we need to ensure they have what it takes to succeed in a world that is becoming more data-driven. 

The event kicked off on Tuesday, June 21, 2022, and featured 35 teams competing head-to-head with their algorithms. At the end of the week, Team ‘Chalupas’ with two students, Cassius Villareal and Willis Erdman, from Lincoln High School in Portland, emerged as the champions of the first High School Terminal competition, winning Apple iPads. Team ‘Raptors’, with Mohsen Ahmadloo from Willowdale High School in Toronto and Harsimran Kaur from Syosset High School in Long Island, won second place and prizes of Apple Airpod Pros. Finally, coming in third was Team ‘UCC_CAA’, with students from Upper Canada College in Toronto, Nicholas Cheng, Gabe D’Souza and Gordon Liang, bringing home Sonos Bluetooth speakers. 

Are you a student interested in Terminal or even just AI and coding? Visit the official Terminal website where you can play our AI game for free by coding your own algorithm!