The Student News Site of Fossil Ridge High School
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Photo Credit: Sasha Chappell

Sabercat Stories: Jay Chandra

When you think of the stereotypical high-level student that takes seven Advanced Placement classes, is involved in multiple honor societies, and participates in many school clubs, Jay Chandra is probably the first person that comes to mind. Currently ranked first in the senior class, Chandra is an outstanding student at Fossil Ridge High School.

AP classes are very difficult, yet many students can manage an entire schedule full of them. Chandra has taken 12 AP classes over the past three years and is taking 6 more this year. “My workload this year is a lot easier this year than last year. I finished taking more difficult AP classes, such as AP Chemistry, AP Biology, and AP Physics C, as well as studying for standardized tests last year. This year is a lot easier because I don’t have as much of a workload, but it is still challenging this year. I usually study about 2 hours every night, and it was much more last year.”

Along with academics, Chandra is also involved in many clubs and sports at Fossil. He is on the Knowledge Bowl team, a club that uses a variety of trivial knowledge to compete against other teams around the state. He explains, “this year, I am on the A team, or the top team, and I compete at a variety of competitions around Colorado. The last competition was at Thompson Valley, and we destroyed the competition.” During practices, he helps “run through questions with the group and teach trivial concepts to other members. I focus on science-related topics the most, followed by history and math.”

Chandra is the vice president of the Science National Honors Society (SNHS) and the Treasurer of the National Honor Society. He made it his goal in SNHS to “grow SNHS throughout this year. SNHS is the least developed of the honor societies at Fossil, so we are trying to do a lot more activities to bring it up to same tier as these honor societies. We started with hosting Trivia Night and planning the trip to the Science Museum.”

He is also a part of Science Olympiad, a club that learns about specific areas of science and builds contraptions to compete against other teams at the Regional, State, and National levels. Chandra is a part of three events, Disease Detectives and Remote Sensing, which are both study-based events that go in depth about these areas of science, and Thermodynamics, where students create a super insulating box that keeps the temperature of a beaker of hot water the same for a given amount of time. He finds that, “I spend about 2 hours each week working and studying all three of these events, but as we get close to the Regional and State events in March and April, we work for about 7 to 8 hours a week.”

Finally, he is a part of the Fossil Tennis team on both the JV and Varsity teams. He says, “I got to play a few Varsity matches against very good opponents around CO. Helped JV and Varsity, helped lead JV to 1st in City.”

Outside of school, Chandra is involved in many activities. Most notably, he works in a research facility at the Colorado State University Department of Chemistry. He explains that, “I research and study energy storage, specifically how to increase the lifetime of a battery. This research is used to improve phone battery life and decrease resource wastage. Using this research, I competed at the Intel International Science fair and received the Grand Award in Chemistry.”

He also enjoys playing football and basketball, explaining that “many people don’t think that I would enjoy that, I really enjoy playing and socializing in these sports. I usually play with my brother and friends. I also play the violin. I used to be very involved in the violin, but now I play on my own as well as with a private teacher.”

Chandra is looking into many out of state colleges, stating that “I am very interested in science and engineering, and I am considering pursuing chemical or electrical engineering. I am looking into Caltech and MIT because they are very prestigious schools and I would like to challenge myself in college.”

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