FULLERTON : Junior High Students to Compete in Math

Top math students from Orange County junior high schools will compete in the statewide Mathcounts competition scheduled for Saturday at Cal State Fullerton.

Four winners from this competition will represent California in the national Mathcounts contest in Washington.

Mathcounts, sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers, is meant to show young students that math is fun and to get them interested in math and science careers, according to Cliff Ishii, a Cypress engineer and state director of the competition.

Scheduled to compete Saturday are four-member teams from Rancho San Joaquin Middle School in Irvine, La Paz Intermediate in Mission Viejo and Serrano Intermediate in El Toro. These teams scored the highest during a regional competition in February.

Competing as an individual will be Jae Lee, an eighth-grader from Los Alisos Intermediate in Mission Viejo. Lee was the top-scoring student from Orange County in the regionals.

The winner of the national competition May 18 will receive a $10,000 college scholarship and will meet President Bush at the White House, Ishii said.