On Monday, April 7th, Choate’s Fed Challenge team won their district preliminary competition, qualifying them for the district finals. The competition took place in Boston, where one of the twelve Federal Reserve district banks is located. The team consisted of Taylor McDonald ’08, Ethan McDonnell ’09, Irene Zhang ’08, Ashwini Kadaba ’08, and Steven Chen ’08. The students were instructed and organized by Ted Hartsoe, a longtime Economics teacher and Fed Challenge coach at Choate. Choate has won the preliminaries for nine out of the past ten years.

Everyone on the team was very excited to win. Ethan McDonnell says, “It definitely felt good to win—we were kind of hoping to win since Choate has such a good track record but it’s great to have that off our chests.”

Arman Naqi ’09, an interested economics scholar, approved of the win: “I think it’s a great accomplishment for Choate and I think it attests to how good the economics program is here.”

The United States Federal Reserve runs the annual competition; its goal is to promote interest in economics among high school students. Each participating school creates a team of five students. The competition is based on a presentation, usually including a PowerPoint, in which each team makes recommendations on current monetary policy. Almost everyone selected for the team has taken a course in monetary policy, and at the end of the course the students create a first draft presentation of their recommendations to the Federal Reserve.

This year’s district preliminary competitions took place during the week of April 6th and lasted four days. Choate’s team chose to present by role-playing as the Board of Governors. Irene Zhang comments, “We hoped to do well, but we weren’t sure how the judges would react to our presentation style.”

Presentations have a fifteen-minute time limit, with a fifteen-minute questionnaire that follows. The questionnaire can be on the specific recommendations made, or on general knowledge about the Federal Reserve.

Irene Zhang explains, “No one has the perfect answer to solve the economic crisis, but we have been looking at some new lending tools [the Federal Reserve] has put out to increase liquidity and improve the situation for commercial and investment banks, so our presentation talked about the economic situation, the federal fund rate, and new lending facilities.” Mr. Hartsoe adds, “The difficulty this year is that the economic situation is so volatile that is hard to tell exactly what the feds should do in response.”

Two economists who typically work for the Boston Federal Reserve bank judge the presentations. So the judges can be as objective as possible, each team is introduced by the students’ names only, not by school name. The judges base their scores on how well the team presents, how well the team is able to answer questions and how well the team works together. In terms of team chemistry, Ashwini Kadaba says, “The team is really nice—we work really well together and there’s really no tension.”

Choate’s team met frequently after March vacation to prepare important aspects of their presentation, such as economic data, the recommendations, and the presentation style. The team also worked on their PowerPoint. Ethan McDonnell says, “The most challenging aspect of it all was the time commitment—we spent a lot of time preparing, and we had to have an excellent knowledge of the Federal Reserve.”

In the week before the competition, the team put in a lot of effort to finish up by meeting twice a day. Once their presentation was completed, they practiced by presenting to other Economics teachers such as Mr. Stanley. Mr. Hartsoe taught and quizzed team members on Federal Reserve knowledge; he also helped to sharpen their presentation. Ethan McDonnell says, “Mr. Hartsoe has been an amazing coach—he’s so knowledgeable and he even gets us donuts.”

On May 1st, the team will go back to Boston to compete in the district finals. If they win there, they will advance to the national finals later in May. Because the team presents on the current economic situation, the team’s presentation will have to be modified to include more recent economic data. Mr. Hartsoe says, “ I think we should do fine—the kids have been working hard, they know a lot about the current economic situation and our team is very well prepared, but you never know if you’re going to win or not.”