SIFMA Foundation InvestWrite competition 4th 0 12th Grade

http://www.sifma.org/newsroom/2014/foundation/sifma_foundation___mcgraw_hill_financial_celebrate_teens’_financial_prowess_on_wall_street__honor_national_winners_of_investwrite/

SIFMA Foundation & McGraw Hill Financial Celebrate Teens’ Financial Prowess on Wall Street: Honor National Winners of InvestWrite

Teen Investors are Bullish on Capital Markets’ Long-term Value

Mac Bank, Marcelo Bongalon, Hannah Brawley, and Olivia Dampier, the four remarkable students who earned national distinction in the Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 SIFMA Foundation InvestWrite® essay competition with McGraw Hill Financial, will visit New York City’s famed financial district today.

SIFMA Foundation’s InvestWrite, made possible in 2013 and 2014 by McGraw Hill Financial, challenges 4th - 12th graders to analyze investments and recommend portfolio allocations targeting financial goals.

These four students are among 20,000 students nationwide who take the InvestWrite challenge each year, developing the personal financial savvy needed to make real-world financial decisions.

New York City, June 26, 2014 – It takes years to build up the financial savvy to navigate the markets. But Mac Bank, Marcelo Bongalon, Hannah Brawley, and Olivia Dampier are decades ahead of the game. They won distinction this year as first place national winners of the SIFMA Foundation’s InvestWrite® essay competition with McGraw Hill Financial.

Winners are being honored in New York City today with a Wall Street Experience that includes a visit to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, a recognition breakfast at the SIFMA Foundation headquarters, and an awards reception recognizing students and some of the 3,500 volunteer judges who ranked the thousands of essay submissions. They will also hear from S&P Capital IQ Chief Equity Strategist, Sam Stovall, author of Seven Rules of Wall Street, about his investment strategy for the second half of 2014, based on his assessment of stock market history, economic projections, fundamental forecasts, and technical trends.

The SIFMA Foundation's InvestWrite competition, launched in 2004 and made possible in 2013 and 2014 by McGraw Hill Financial, challenges 4th - 12th grade students to analyze an investment scenario and recommend portfolio allocations targeting short- and long-term financial goals. The competition serves as a culminating activity for the 600,000 students nationwide who compete in The Stock Market Game™ program each year.

The four students being honored today are:

• Mac Bank, a senior at Bloomfield Hills High School, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, who claimed the top prize for the high school division in the SIFMA Foundation’s Spring 2014 InvestWrite national essay competition with McGraw Hill Financial.
• Marcelo Bongalon, a sixth grader at St. Cecilia School, San Francisco, California, who claimed the top prize for the middle school division in the SIFMA Foundation’s Spring 2014 InvestWrite national essay competition with McGraw Hill Financial.
• Hannah Brawley, a senior at Vestavia Hills High School, Vestavia Hills, Alabama, who claimed the top prize for the high school division in the SIFMA Foundation’s Fall 2013 InvestWrite national essay competition with McGraw Hill Financial.
• Olivia Dampier, a seventh grade student at Summit Ridge Middle School, Littleton, Colorado, who claimed the top prize for the middle school division in the SIFMA Foundation’s Fall 2013 InvestWrite national essay competition with McGraw Hill Financial.

InvestWrite invites students to develop the personal financial savvy needed to make real-world financial decisions with confidence and a deeper understanding of opportunities, consequences, and benefits. Students consider real-world economic events and trends, conduct research online, develop investment recommendations and, in the process, gain the skills to prepare for their own financial future. They work in groups during the Stock Market Game program but then write essays individually about their experience. Bank, Bongalon, Brawley and Dampier are among the 20,000 students across the nation who take the InvestWrite challenge each year.

The Fall 2013 - Spring 2014 winning InvestWrite essays were chosen through rigorous judging by thousands of teachers and industry professionals who evaluate students’ understanding of asset allocation, the stock market, and factors that drive investments as well as their expression of investment ideas in essay form.

"Teaching students at a very young age the basics of finance and the stock market is essential to their broad education and to being well-informed investors later in life,” said Douglas L. Peterson, President and Chief Executive Officer of McGraw Hill Financial. “As financial markets become more complex and more global, investors of all ages can benefit from learning how to save, spend and earn money wisely—what we call ‘financial essentials.’ We are delighted to support the SIFMA Foundation and congratulate the winning students on this achievement.”

“SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game and InvestWrite are transformative programs that prepare students for college, career and life while teaching them about the capital markets,” said Melanie Mortimer, Executive Director of the SIFMA Foundation. “Our students do measurably better on math, economics and personal finance tests. They also learn to work in teams, manage change, monitor and analyze the impact of global business and economic activity, and become smart consumers. We are proud to partner with McGraw Hill Financial and applaud their longstanding commitment to providing young people a better understanding of the capital markets and a better future.”

The SIFMA Foundation’s InvestWrite competition bridges classroom learning in mathematics, social studies, language arts, business and economics with the practical research and knowledge required for long-term personal financial planning. Students are, in fact, building on what they have learned through their participation in the Stock Market Game, which has reached more than 15 million students since its inception in 1977.

An independent study by Learning Point Associates found that students who participated in the Stock Market Game scored significantly higher on mathematics and financial literacy tests than their peers who did not participate. They also found that teachers who taught the Stock Market Game reported that the program motivated them to better plan for their own financial futures. The Stock Market Game has been named the only program that successfully increased scores on the Jumpstart Coalition’s test of high school students’ financial literacy.

PRMIA Risk challenge for students! Win upto $10,000.

Attention Students! On behalf of the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA), we invite students to participate in the PRMIA Risk Management Challenge (PRMC).   A competition of the PRMIA Institute, the PRMC encourages undergraduate and graduate students from multiple disciplines to come together as a 3- or 4- member team to use critical and creative thinking skills to solve realistic business problems with a risk management focus. Ultimately, the PRMC aims to develop and strengthen professional and social relationships across students, faculty, and risk professionals.  This excellent opportunity will allow student teams to navigate through two real-life risk management challenges in order to offer them practical experiences in financial services and management consulting. The winning team wins a prize up to US$10,000 (subject to US tax laws).  Register

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2018 - sure way to land a job at Microsoft

Facebook and Twitter started as student projects!

Imagine Cup

Global Competition

Dream it. Build it. Live it.

The next big thing could come from you. The Imagine Cup is here to help you take the first steps. It's a global contest for the most original student applications, and the winning team will take home up to $100,000 (US).

Incredible, world-changing software innovations often come from students. Social networks, music services, photo apps, games, gadgets and robotics – the list goes on. We’re looking for the next big thing and we know students like you are going to make it. Imagine Cup, Microsoft’s premier international competition for young developers, is your chance to show off your biggest, boldest software solution. Code with purpose and show the world what you’ve got.

This competition is the doorway to your success. If you can win here, you can win anywhere. If you’ve got a great idea, assemble a great team and work hard to bring that idea to life. Your project could be on devices all over the world, changing lives and giving people the thrill of seeing the future come to life right before their eyes.

Whatever your innovation, you can make an impact and win big – like,$100,000 big – with Imagine Cup. With prizing that includes mentorship opportunities with industry leaders, an Azure grant and cash, Imagine Cup can help you take your project to the next level.

Register now and start your 2018 Imagine Cup journey!

Microsoft Imagine cup - a great way to get a job offer

https://www.imaginecup.com

The Microsoft Imagine Cup brings together students from all over the world and asks them to use their creativity and passion for technology to help solve the world’s toughest problems. This year, more than 350,000 students from 183 countries and regions registered to compete and, from July 8-13, the finalists (more than 400 students from 70 countries) will meet for the Worldwide Finals in New York City.

People around the world also have the opportunity to get involved in the excitement through the Imagine Cup People’s Choice Award.

The People’s Choice Award is just one component of several competitions and prizes at the Imagine Cup. From creating apps and videos to building Web sites and embedded solutions, students are truly helping to change the world with Microsoft technologies.

Do SAT Prep Courses Help Test Takers?

C. Motivated students tend to improve no matter what, but coaching gives an additional bump

By Jo Craven McGinty, The Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2015                                                  

By the end of this weekend, thousands of high-school students will have taken the SAT, that nerve-racking, four-hour exam used by colleges and universities to screen applicants. The best preparation, of course, is to have paid attention in school, studied hard and learned the material. But many students also pay for expensive test-prep courses in hopes of boosting their scores. Do the courses work? Please use a No. 2 pencil and mark the correct answer:

(A) Always

(B) Never

(C) Sometimes

(D) What was the question again?

(E) Oh, jeez, time’s up

Academic researchers have repeatedly tried to determine whether coaching improves SAT scores. It is a difficult question to answer objectively because of the confounding variables.

Highly motivated students—like those who sign up for test-prep courses—are likely to improve no matter what. Just taking the test again often raises scores. And it is hard to distinguish the effects of test prep from other factors that may contribute to a better score.

Still, different studies over the years have suggested coaching tends to improve performance, though perhaps less dramatically than some test-prep companies suggest as researchers have found some improvement was likely to occur without coaching.

“The mythology is that students who are scoring in the 500s will get into the 750 range,” said Derek Briggs, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Education who has studied the effects of test preparation. “A realistic bump from commercial test prep might be about 20 to 30 points on math and verbal sections combined, but that’s on top of whatever baseline increase we’d expect of students who do everything except get commercial test prep.”

It’s easy to understand the allure. Those extra points could improve the chance of being admitted to a coveted school, and higher scores may also increase the dollar amount of merit-based scholarships.

For example, freshmen entering Georgia State University with an SAT score of 1200 might qualify only for a one-time $500 award, depending on their other qualifications. Those who scored 50 points more might qualify for a renewable scholarship of $3,000 a year.

Knowing the stakes, many students, with the backing of their parents, pay for the coaching.

In advance of this weekend’s tests (there is also a second round of SAT exams in June), experts at Princeton Review and Kaplan, two test-prep companies, shared what they say are their best tips for boosting scores. If nothing else, the information may help nervous test takers relax.

The SATs, a time-honored bit of student stress, captured in this image of students taking the exam in “If you can defuse frenzy around the test and make students feel confident about being a test taker, they are already going to be a success,” said Robert Franek, senior vice president and publisher of Princeton Review.

Survey the map. Going into the exam, students should understand what Mr. Franek calls the geography of the test. Most sections begin with easier questions followed by those of medium difficulty and concluding with the most challenging questions. This means the answer choices that seem obvious in the earlier questions of a section are probably correct. But answers for the most difficult questions will likely include ambiguous choices that require more thought. Students who are aware of this may trust their instincts on the easy questions, spending perhaps 15 seconds on each, to give more careful consideration to the difficult questions.

Slow down. Each multiple-choice question on the SAT is worth one point. There is no penalty for skipping a question. But a wrong answer subtracts one-quarter point from the score—although that will change in March 2016, when a new version of the test rolls out, eliminating the “wrong-answer penalty.” (In June, the College Board, which publishes the SAT, in partnership with Khan Academy will release a free practice program for the redesigned SAT.)

For now, the Princeton Review and Kaplan advise students who aren’t trying for a perfect score to answer only a portion of the questions in a section to devote more time to each answer.

Scoring 600 in math, for example, requires 38 points. To achieve that, the Princeton Review suggests answering 42 of the 54 questions. Answering a few more questions than the point goal provides a cushion for errors.

“For me, there were a couple of questions that always threw me,” said Seppy Basili, vice president of college admissions for Kaplan. “It was liberating to know I could skip them.”

Use the process of elimination. Most SAT questions are multiple-choice, and the pros advise against random guesses. In other words, when in doubt, don't simply choose “C”. However, crossing out choices that are obviously wrong may help students arrive at the correct response.  

“Students need to understand how guessing works,” Mr. Basili said. “If you can eliminate at least one answer or, better, two, the odds are in your favor. It doesn’t help to blind-guess.”

Understand super scoring. When students retake the SAT, their scores often improve—but they may also get worse. At most schools, this is irrelevant because they “super score,” which means they mix and match test results, judging students by their best scores for each section regardless of whether the score was recorded on the first or fourth attempt.

Students are best served by developing their knowledge, but cultivating a few test-taking skills can’t hurt—especially if it reduces the anxiety many feel going into the exam. So, if your son or daughter, and you, are laid-back types, relax. Skip a question here and there. Focus on what you know. And have a few backup schools in mind.

Pencils down.