‘Only winners come to Kazan’

“The golden pool of our country”

The final stage of the olympiad in economics was attended by 342 students of grades 9-11 from 64 regions of Russia. The young people came to Kazan on March 29 and lived in Krutushka until April 4. There, young experts in economics wrote competitive assignments and completed an educational programme from specialised experts: representatives of Sber, Tinkoff, and employees of Russian universities.

The diploma of the winner or prize-winner of All-Russian olympiad gives you the opportunity to become a student of a specialised field of study at any university in the country. So the young people who were on stage yesterday will no longer have to worry about the results of the Unified State Exam. 134 schoolchildren were recognised as winners. The geography of the participants is extensive: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan, Udmurtia, Tyumen Oblast, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Saratov Oblast, Orenburg Oblast, Sverdlovsk Oblast and even the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The diplomas of the winners were awarded to 28 lucky people from Moscow, Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny and Voronezh. Moscow residents were able to score the most points in their parallel and get the title of the absolute winner.

Ilsur Khadiullin, Minister of Education and Science of Tatarstan, congratulated the experts of economics. “When the golden pool of our country comes on the scene, it is very pleasant," he said. Khadiullin conveyed congratulations to the children from Minister of Education of Russia Sergey Kravtsov and invited the students to continue their education in the capital of Tatarstan.

“The defeated do not come to Kazan. Only winners and brave, wise intellectuals come to Kazan," the minister stressed.

“Those who were on stage will become prominent people in the Russian economy”

Realnoe Vremya asked the jury how it evaluates the results that the students showed this year. The knowledge of the participants was evaluated positively.

“The students showed a traditionally high level of problem solving. It seems to me that over the past few years the format of the All-Russian Olympiad in Economics has been established, so schoolchildren are trained for a certain type of tasks and constantly show good results," said Dmitry Dagaev, the deputy chairman of the jury, Associate Professor of the Russian School of Economics.

However, training is not the only strong point of the participants of the olympiad. As Dagaev explained, the ability to solve problems alone is not enough to win. Tasks that correspond to recent events often appear in the olympiad:

“This applies to the policy of the Central Bank in the context of current restrictions, and the role of the state in the economy, and some other subjects. Here students have to demonstrate not only technical skills in solving complex mathematical models, but also economic intuition, reading, and understanding of the general development of the economy in Russia and in the world.

The jury is confident that the young people succeeded to cope with this difficult task. Certainly, students cannot yet say for sure which career they will choose. But no matter what they do, they have every chance to succeed. “Those who have been on stage today as winners and prize-winners will become prominent people in economics, in the Russian economy. We will hear more about them," Dagaev believes.

“Finding like-minded people, solving problems, testing yourself”

The young people themselves were also satisfied with the olympiad.

“I really liked it. A good company. The tasks were interesting and unusual: for example, a difficult quantitative task on the curve of trading opportunities," said prize-winner Elvira Shalashova from the city of Dolgoprudny, Moscow region.

In her opinion, it is important to take part in the olympiads. Not only for the sake of admission benefits: “It seems to me that they help to find like-minded people, solve problems, test yourself, compete.”

“Kazan is very beautiful. We lived in Baytika, we didn't go out of the territory much. But we were on an excursion to the Kremlin, we looked at the registry office in the form of a kazan. The architecture is very beautiful here, chak-chaks (Tatar treat — ed.) are delicious," Elvira shared her impressions of the capital of Tatarstan.

Alexandra Valeryanova from St. Petersburg also believes that communication with like-minded people is an important part of the olympiad:

“We have a very good team, great guys, we had a good time. Thanks to them, I won't regret coming, even if I don't get a diploma," she said before the award ceremony.

But the coveted diploma of the prize-winner was awarded to the young woman. So now the doors of the Higher School of Economics, which Alexandra dreamed of becoming a student of, are open to her.

Alexander Arzamasov from Naberezhnye Chelny also became a winner. However, he was not worried about the benefits of admission. The portfolio of the eleventh grader already has a diploma of the winner of the All-Russian Olympiad in mathematics. Alexander decided to study economics out of scientific interest.

“After my success in mathematics, I wanted to try myself in something new. It was interesting to study economics, because it opens up other fields of activity, paradigms of thinking. I met new people and began to look at the world in a different way, more economically," he states.