The Class of 2025 Newspaper | February 2019

Admission Season Admission facts: 1st-4th grades: $50 fee to apply 5th-11th grades: $175 fee to apply 1st-4th grades: $285 testing fee for CATS (Collaborative Academic Testing Service) 1st grade: $65 for ERB (Educational Records Bureau) AABL (Admission Assessment for Beginning Learners) 2nd-11th grade: $105 for ERB ISEE (Independent School Entrance Examination)

Q&A with Mr. Mack Q (Eduardo Mousinho and Andrew Jin): How many people apply to St. Mark’s each year?

A (Mr. Mack): In the past two years, 630 and 603 people have applied for St. Mark’s.

Q: How many of these 600 get in?

A: About 120 of the 600 applicants got into St. Mark’s. The most recipients of new members are the first grade, the fifth grade, and the ninth grade, with 32, 20-25, and 12-15 respectively.

Q: What are you looking for in an ideal applicant for St. Mark’s?

A: We look for three things in applicants: We look for intellectual curiosity, strong character, and the ability to contribute to St. Mark’s in a meaningful way.

Q: What is the application process?

A: First, the person goes online to www.smtexas.org/apply. They will need to fill out a form that has questions such as where they live and which college they would like to go to. Next, the applicant (referred to from now on as the student) writes an essay, usually about their most memorable moment. Their parents also have to submit an essay on similar topics, like why their son should attend St. Mark’s. The student’s current grades are then examined to attempt to guess how intellectually curious he is. Their former Math and English teachers then submit a report evaluating where he is on an academic and behavioral standard. This report helps anticipate how strong his character is, and what his contribution to St. Mark’s will be.

Q: What is the “buddy” system?

A: It is formally called the “student ambassador” system. First, current students sign up at the beginning of the year to be a student ambassador. There is an Upper School version called the “lion + sword”. For both versions, there are two lists. One is a list of the ambassadors, and the

other is the list of potential students that have signed up for a tour around St. Mark’s. The applicant (referred to as the buddy) takes a small “test” about his hobbies and interests. The admissions office then looks at each ambassador’s hobbies and interests and tries to pair them up with each other. The admissions office wants the buddies and the ambassadors to be “like-minded”.

Q: How long does it take for people to “sort out” all of the applicants and determine if they qualify for St. Mark’s?

A: Mr. Baker needs to read all of the applications, so it takes him a long time to finish and make a decision. Mrs. Schneidewind reads all of the Lower School’s applicant forms, too. The Upper School Committee needs to read all of the Upper School’s applicant forms. This combined with the fact that they must make a decision about who goes in the limited amount of space in St. Mark’s means that the total admission process is long. Applicants must apply almost a year in advance to even having a chance of going into St. Mark’s at their desired year.

Q: Are you allowed to re-apply to St. Mark’s?

A: Yes, you are allowed to reapply. The admissions office never turns down a request from a parent wondering why their child is not in St. Mark’s. During the conversation with the parent, the admissions office tells the parent how their son did on the standardized tests and some information on how to get into St. Mark’s in the future if they are interested in applying.

Q: If you have a relative in St. Mark’s or have been in St. Mark’s, does that affect your chances of getting in?

A: Yes, it does. If you have any close relatives currently or formerly in St. Mark’s, you have an increased chance of getting in. This is called a community application. Normally, the chance of

getting into St. Mark’s is around 20%. But if you have community application, your chances are boosted up to around 40%.

Interview with Neil Yepuri About the Recent Government Shutdown Q: How has your mom’s attitude changed?

She’s happier because she isn’t stressed about work.

Q. What was your mom’s initial reaction?

She was really excited because it was her birthday and some of her friends were in town.

Q. What was your initial reaction?

We were also really sad for other people because some families rely on the government.

Q. Has life changed much because of the furlough?

Not really, except that my mom is now home all the time, so we don’t need a nanny all the time.

Q. How do you feel about the furlough?

It’s definitely a bad thing from a family standpoint. We financially were okay, but we obviously feel terrible for all the government families out there. As for a political standpoint, I feel it is also a bad thing because a president should never be able to use a government shutdown as leverage.

Q. Now that the shutdown is over (temporarily), is life back to normal?

Life is mostly back to normal, except for mom’s new outlook on things (i.e. not stressing out about work).

The Winn Science Center In 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was the first man to reach space. The exact same year, St. Marks unveiled a new science center, the McDermott-Green Quadrangle. Recently, a new state of art science center will provide St. Mark’s students to one of the best learning facilities contributed purely to science.

Winn Science Center consists of a new mind-blowing planetarium. If you have not seen it, definitely go check it out. There is a new lecture hall that can fit over 200 people and a greenhouse. The Arthur Douglas Greenhouse has three parts. There is one large part that students can research and do experiments in. It has a “customizable irrigation system”, tools plant racks, tables, and grow lights. The other two parts are used to grow a plant specimen. There is an arid ecosystem and a tropical ecosystem. There is also Maker Space or Shop or Robotics Lab. In this area, you can build whatever you want. It contains all the tools and you need to build it. Go check all this out if you haven’t yet!

Interview with Hans Hesse ‘25: Q: “What do you think of the Winn Science Center?”

Hans: “I think The Winn Science Center gives people an opportunity to excel and learn more science.”

Q: “What is your favorite part of Winn?”

Hans: “The Planetarium!”

MathCounts Chapter Competition Saturday, February 2, was the date of the annual MathCounts Chapter Competition. St. Mark’s sent a team of 4 people, and 6 individual participants to the competition. This year, the team of 4 consisted of the following people: Kevin Lu, Vardhan Agnihotri, Keshav Krishna, and Linyang Lee. They are in 7th, 7th, 8th, and 6th grades, respectively. The competition consisted of several different types of rounds. The first round was the Sprint round. There, competitors got a packet of 30 questions and had 40 minutes to answer them. The second round was the Target round.

Each person was given a sheet with 2 problems and had 6 minutes to answer them. The process was repeated until 8 questions have been answered. The third round was the Team round. In this round, each school’s team of 4 gets 20 minutes to answer 10 questions by collaborating in many ways. Finally, there was the Countdown round, a Jeopardy-style round where 2 contestants go head-to-head to answer the same problem and win prizes. Notable performances here include Kevin Lu’s first-place finish and Arnav Lahoti’s third place. After the Countdown round, there was an awards ceremony, and the top two teams are allowed to compete in the state competition.

This year, St. Mark’s came in second place to Highland Park Middle School. Our team of four will be moving on to the state competition. Until then, it’s just practice, practice, and more practice for them. They all represent our school well.

Math Team Practice: Jan 12 Practice: Jan 26 Qualifier: February 23 Qualifier: March 3 State: April 27 So far MATH Team has had great success in January meets and the MATH Team expects even more in the future, in the last meet at Azle High School they placed 3rd overall, in the first meet at Highland Park they placed 4th overall. Many students came back with hardware, and at both the Azle meet and the Highland Park meet, the team came back with team trophies. The MATH Team has very high expectations for the state meet. MATH Team isn’t just for math experts like Linyang or Benjamin or Surya. They would love if more people joined.

February 2019 Sports Review Soccer: Liverpool, who had a chance to go seven points clear at the top of the table, was ecstatic at first, but the Reds 1-1 draw at King Power Stadium against Leicester sufficed to dampen the mood by gaining just one point on Man City. This also proves that no team is truly “invincible” with the hefty moniker given to a select few teams over the years, such as Arsenal’s unbeaten season in 2004, or Juventus’s 49-game unbeaten streak in 2012. Modern-day Juventus are in the Champions League round of sixteen. On Tuesday and Wednesday 12-13, four games were played, with Kylian Mbappe leading the Neymar/Cavani-less PSG over a surging Manchester United 2-0 and Roma handling FC Porto 2-1 with ease on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Real Madrid furthered their effort to salvage what has been a shaky season for them with a 2-1 win over Frankie de Jong’s Ajax and Tottenham rolled over Dortmund 3-0. 1 week later, on the 19th, Bayern Munich and Lyon held Liverpool and Barcelona’s dangerous attacks to a 0-0 draw. On the 20th, Schalke 04 fought well against Manchester City, who eventually won with two late goals 3-2 after going 2-1 down on succesive Nabil Bentaleb penalties assisted by Video Assistant Referee (VAR). Meanwhile, Juventus’s situation is dire after a 2-0 loss to Atletico Madrid because of some poor tactics from the Italian side in which Ronaldo was a non-factor against a world-class keeper like Jan Oblak.

Basketball: This week’s college basketball top 5 are Tennessee, Duke, Virginia, Gonzaga, and Michigan, respectively. Meanwhile, in the NBA, the players and coaches are in the final stretch before the All-Star break, which is the weekend of winter break (February 15-17) with Lebron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo heading the (now televised!) playground-style All-Star Draft

for the Western and Eastern Conferences, respectively. The playground style of draft to pick All-Star teams was adopted by the NBA last year and works like this: There is one captain for each team. The captain is the player from each conference who received the most votes from the fans, the media, and the analysts. Then the rest of the All-Stars are chosen. Approximately 10 days prior to the February 17 date of the game, the captains get to go back and forth with their picks for their teams. James will pick first, and Antetokounmpo will go second. Additionally, on All-Star weekend, the skills challenge, three-point contest, dunk contest, and Rising Stars challenge will take place. Also, on February 7th, the trade deadline passed, with a couple of notable players who were on the trade block or in finalized deals such as Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans, who made headlines by publicly requesting a trade (he was later fined for this gesture), or Kristaps Porzingis, who was just traded away from New York as the centerpiece of a deal with Dallas.

Baseball: Still waiting on this front, but it helps to know that the Rangers will be good this year.

Still, spring training starts next month, and it should be pretty exciting.

Hockey: The Dallas Stars are 4th place in the Western Conference division, right behind Mr. Lange’s favorite team, the Blues (3rd place) and the Nashville Predators (2nd place). Both the Stars and the Winnipeg Jets (1st place) have a 2 loss streak.

Water Polo: As can be seen, USC is the leading team in the U.S.A. USC is almost always in the lead for water polo. Professional water polo players usually make only about 50,000 dollars a year, compared to football players who make millions every year. Also, many kids do not play water polo because they may get laughed at for wearing a speedo. But, in many other countries around the world, water polo is a major sport. Water polo was also the first team sport in the Olympics.

Super Bowl The Super Bowl was at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. The game was at 5:30 between the favored New England Patriots and the Super Bowl seeking Rams. The over-under on the game was 48.5 points and the New England Patriots went up 3.5. The Patriots ended up winning 13-3, as the Rams could not get any offense going throughout the night. Julian Edelman was the MVP of the game.

Here is a poll on why people watch the Super Bowl and here were the results: for the game 7 for the ads 1 spending time with others 1 snacks 1

Here is another poll for who people thought will win: 2 for the Rams 8 for the Patriots Another poll for favorite ads: Game of Thrones 2 Marvel 2 NFL Commercial Alexa Commercial 1 Avocados from Mexico 1

Riddles So there are two doors one leads to paradise and one leads to certain death, you don’t know which is which. There are two guards, one for each door, you don’t know which one always tells the truth and one always tells lies. You can only ask one question to one guard. What do you ask?

You ask one guard what would he do if he were the other guard what door then you walk through the other.

You live in a one-story house that is all purple. The floor is purple. The couch is purple. People wear purple makeup. The plants are purple. What color are the stairs?

There are no stairs.

What belongs to you but other people use it more than you?-Your Name.

Doctor: Thank you, student loans. I will never be able to repay you.

Women really know how to hold a grudge. My wife asked me to pass her a lip balm, but I gave her a tube of superglue on accident. It’s been a month now, and she’s still not speaking to me.

One day, a prisoner on Death Row was being taken to be executed by firing squad. He had no requests, but as he is put in front of the squad, he asks to sing his favorite song with no interruptions. The guard solemnly nods yes.

He began. “A googol bottles of beer on the wall, a googol bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around…” (a googol is 10​100​)

It’s not that dragons aren’t real...It’s that the snake genes are dominant...

In Fortnite, the hero can: ● Run indefinitely ● Jump over a fence without trying ● Carry crazy amounts of ammunition ● Carry crazy amounts of weaponry ● Knows how to use anything even if he hasn’t seen anything like it before ● Can literally be silent when crouching ● Can summon walls, ramps, capstones, and platforms at will ● Create a platform of steel bigger than they are just by using a blue paper and a pencil ● Can drink unknown substances and gain health ● Can go flying in the air by shaking an orb ● Carry a pickaxe for insane distances ● Carryover 1000 logs, bricks, and steel I-beams ● DISSOLVES IN SALTWATER

Can You Solve This puzzle?

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The ​End​ Beginning.

By the way, ways to solve: CaPiTaL lEtTeRs CaN bE vErY mIsLeAdInG, and Sometimes hingsT erA ypedT ackwardsB. If you read this, then tell everyone else.

Art

Chinese Dragon by Gavin Bowles