From press release

For the 11th consecutive year, Keith Country Day School captured first place in its division at the World Youth in Science and Engineering (WYSE) regional competition, hosted at Rock Valley College on Feb. 11. The team netted a perfect score of 500 and garnered 12 individual medals.

“To have continued success in a competition like this really speaks to the quality of our faculty and our students,” said Leo Dombrowski, who monitors the WYSE team and is the school’s middle and upper school science teacher.

Designed as an academic challenge and administered by WYSE officials, the regional sectional and state competitions are a series of tests created for the brightest high school students in Illinois and Missouri. Friday’s competition saw six different Keith students place first individually in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Math and Physics.

Test material is drawn from senior high school and freshman level college curricula and written by teams of college and university faculty. Subjects for the events include biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering graphics, English, mathematics, and physics. Each test production team produces three tests of increasing levels of difficulty, regional, sectional and state finals. Students compete as individuals and as part of a team where they have 40 minutes to complete multiple-choice tests that range in length from 30 questions (computer science) to 100 questions (English).

In 2007, Keith won the WYSE state championship. It was the first time a school in the stateline won the state title. Following Friday’s regional win, the academic team advances to the WYSE sectionals in March at Northern Illinois University. The team will need to finish in first or second place at the sectionals to advance to the April state championships.

Keith Country Day School is an independent, nonsectarian, college-preparatory school. Located on a 15-acre campus overlooking the Rock River, Keith serves students from age 3 through grade 12 from the northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin area. The school is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools and fully accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. More information about Keith School is available at www.keithschool.com ^[1].

From the Feb. 23-March 1, 2011, issue