• NOTE: the Science Olympiad Webpage is being re-designed for 2021-22. I will post updates when they are ready. In the meantime, please contact me or one of our new presidents (Simal Patel (Knowledge President) or Ella Brown (Build President) if you have questions.

    8/20/21 update

     

     

    ANNOUNCEMENTS

    I want to give a big thank you to parents/guardians for their help over the past couple of years. Covid-19 has made everything crazy.

    This page is not currently being maintained. For up-to-date announcements about the 2021-22 school year, including our calendar of events, please see the SciOly Google Classroom or contact me.

    My email is ian.freedman@wcsdny.org

     

     

    Welcome to Science Olympiad!

     

    UPDATE: 3/16/20 

    Regretably, the NY State Science Olympiad organization has cancelled this year's state championships due to concerns over the Corona Virus COVID-19.
     
    Many folks, including myself, are heartbroken over this given how much work the students put into the club this year. However, based on the current COVID-19 situation, I feel like this clearly was the correct decision. Thank you all for your support of ScienceOlympiad here in WCSD and of our science programs in general! 
     

    UPDATE: 2/10/20 

    2019-20 SciOly Team Photo

     

    We’re excited to report that the John Jay’s Science Olympiad team will be moving on to the New York State competition again this year! Nearly 50 students from JJ participated in the Mid-Hudson Science Olympiad Regional Competition on Saturday, which was hosted at John Jay High School. This was our second time hosting the event. 32 teams from 21 area high schools attended the competition, with JJ teams placing 5th, 7th and 11th overall.

    Overall, our teams won 34 medals in 23 events, with 35 different students winning at least one medal. Among the awards, we won:

    Second place medals for Forensics (Jessica Healey and Patrick Rooney), Machines (William  Sonnleitner and Ratna Sharma), Protein Modeling (Simal Patel, Rohan Ganesan, Scott Gremelsbacker).

    Third place medals for Astronomy (Aakarsh Sayah and Shreyas Babu), Circuit Lab (Robert Zhu and Brianna Mark), Designer Genes (Rohan Ganesan and Sanjay Natesan), Detector Building (William Sonnleitner and Shreyas Babu), Disease Detectives (Sanjay Natesan and Rohan Ganesan).

    Jess Healey, Rohan Ganesan and Ella Brown each won medals in four different events.

    Aakarsh Sayah and William Sonnleitner are the club co-presidents and deserve accolades for their efforts this year.

    As impressed as we were by the hard work put forth by our SciOly students, we were completely blown away by the combined efforts of everyone in the WCSD community who helped to make the Regional competition happen. Amy Matts (retired Spackenkill teacher), Joe Sonntag (retired JJ physics teacher) and Tad Herman (JJ physics & technology teacher) spearheaded the organization of the competition, which involved about 25 WCSD volunteers, 40 student volunteers, 15 community volunteers, plus volunteers from the other schools that attended. Principal David Kedzielawa and Adam Panzer, WCSD Director of Math and Science, were generous enough to host the award ceremony.

     

     

    2019-20 Initial Announcements

    The 2019-20 season is upon us! Thanks everyone for your participation and/or support. 

    Science Olympiad is a club that competes in an annual Science Olympiad (Division C) competition, where students hone their knowledge in science topics and build fun and exciting science projects.

    For more detailed information, including event and testing information, students should enroll in our Google Classroom and Remind sections. Please contact an officer or Mr. Freedman for more details.

     

     JJ State SciOly team

     

    Tentative events & Dates:

    Informational meeting: Thursday Sept 11th (Students who wish to participate in this club this year are STRONGLY encouraged to attend.)
     
    Testing tryout: September 26th. To prepare for the practice tests, team members are encouraged to (a) talk to team officers, (b) get study materials from room 263, and (c) see the Science Olympiad Student Center Wiki
     
     
    Cornell University - November 23rd, 2019
    Estimated departure time: 2:30 am from JJHS (Yes! Sorry it's so early, but this is the only way to do this as a day trip)
     
     
    Columbia HS invitational (tentative) - Jan 4, 2020
    Estimated departure time: 5:30 am from JJHS
     
    Regionals (held at John Jay HS) - Saturday Feb. 8, 2020
     
     
    NY State Competition on March 13-14th (if we place in the top 4 in our region)
    The competition is at LeMoyne College, in the Syracuse area. Est departure is at about 10 am. Returing to JJHS at about 11pm.

     

    In the unlikely event the team places in the top 2 in NY state, we would also attend the National Competition.

    Over 600 teams compete in NY Science Olympiad every year. We typically place in the top 30 or 40 teams in the state. Our highest placement came in 2015-16, when JJHS placed 7th in New York.

     

    Officers have been chosen for 2019-20!

     

    Team meetings will usually be on Mondays after school in room 273 (physics/chem wing).

    Study groups in the different disciplines will be meeting on other days of the week (TBD)

    Students often stay after school on other days of the week to study or work on build events.

     

     

    This year's team officers include:

    Aakarsh Sahay and Will Sonnleitner are co-presidents

    Dan Sweeny and Sanjay Natesan are vice-presidents.

    Aryan Verma is treasurer.
     
    Simal Patel is secretary.

     

    The team advisors/coaches are:

    Mr. Freedman (physics)

    Mrs. Miller (chemistry)

    Mr. Herman, Mr. Freedman, Mrs. Kotlowski and Mrs. Miller (among others) are helping to plan the Regional Competition at JJHS, along with Amy Matts (retired Spackenkill teacher). 

     

     

     

    Links:

    New York State Science Olympiad

    National Science Olympiad

    Science Olympiad Student Center Wiki

    Team members should contact an officer to get a link to the team (a) Google Classroom and to enroll in the team's (b) Remind.com account.

    There are YouTube videos that showcase a number of the build events from past years. If you're curious to see the kinds of fun projects our students build, please check them out.

     

    2017-18 Results

    We’re excited to report John Jay (Hopewell Junction) placed 26th in the state Science Olympiad competition this year. About 440 schools in NY participated in Science Olympiad this year. We won 3 medals at the tournament, including 2nd place in Write-It-Do-It (Joseph Nikac and Amanda Morales), 9th place in Experimental Design (Joshua Sudijono, Joseph Nikac and Neepa Gupta) and 10th place in Chem Lab (Joshua Sudijono, Neepa Gupta). Photos of the medal winners is shown below.

     

            JJ SciOly medal winners      

     

    At the 2017-18 Mid-Hudson regional competition the team won an astounding 29 medals in 23 events (we won at least one medal in 20 of the 23 events). Team A placed fourth overall and Team B placed seventh overall out of the 28 teams that attended the event, and 26 of our 30 students won at least one medal, and 11 students won medals in every event in which they competed.