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15 Indian-American Students Enter Spelling Bee Semifinals
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 30 May 2013, 19:37 IST
Himanvi Kopuri from Colorado, Nikitha Chandran from Florida, Vanya Shivashankar from Kansas, Neha Seshadri from Michigan, Shobha Dasari from Texas and Vismaya Kharkar from Utah are the girls who made it to the semi-final.
The boys who qualified are Pranav Shivakumar from Illinois, Kuvam Shahane from Michigan, Gokul Venkatachalam from Misouri, Ryan Devanandan, Sriram Hathwar and Arvind Mahankali from New York, Ashwin Veeramani from Ohio, Aditya Rao from New Jersey, and Chetan Reddy from Texas.
Indian Americans have been dominating the competition by winning the ‘champion’ title for 5 years consecutively. Sameer Mishra won the title in 2008, Laodicean Kavya Shivashankar in 2009, Anamika Veeramani in 2010, Sukanya Roy 2011 and Snigdha Nandipati in 2012.
The competition first took place on the year 1925 and for the first time in its history, a section on vocabulary has been incorporated as an element of the competition.
"This is a significant change in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but also a natural one," said Paige Kimble, director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. "It represents a deepening of the Bee's commitment to its purpose: to help students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives."