Tandon Engineers Triumph at the All-University Games

The gym at NYU's John A. Paulson Center was packed with students chanting, competing, and cheering on the evening of February 17, and when the final scores were tallied at NYU’s All-University Games event, one school stood far above the rest. The Tandon School of Engineering finished first with 32 points, nearly doubling the score of second-place Stern.

Tandon had arrived at that impressive final tally by racking up a first-place finish in cup stacking (which requires competitors to place groups of cups in pyramidal configurations as quickly as possible), first in tug-of-war, second in University Feud (think Family Feud, but with classmates instead of siblings), and fourth-place showings in both basketball and Mario Kart — all while juggling the relentless demands of their labs and classes.

A Team Built to Win

That victory didn't happen by chance. Bhavya Sanjana, an Electrical and Computer Engineering major and Alternate Senator on the Tandon Undergraduate Student Council (TUSC), served as one of the team's overall captains and admitted that last year’s performance left much to be desired. “We had very few participants, so this year, we resolved to fix that,” she says, “We also paid a lot of attention to recruiting people with specific skills, like those who had played high school basketball or stacked cups before.”

Ultimately, 19 Tandon undergraduate and graduate students showed up at Paulson to compete. Among them were Nobodit Choudhury and Demetri Sebastian Lopez, executive members of Tandon’s Graduate Student Council.

For Nobodit, preparing to graduate with his master’s degree in Computer Engineering this year, the win was a gratifying way to show his school spirit and cap off his Tandon experience. “I’ll be sorry not to participate next year,” he says, “but I feel confident that next year, they’ll build on this momentum and do even better.” Demetri, who was overall co-captain and helmed the Mario Kart and tug-of-war teams, vows to ensure that such confidence is not misplaced: “Last year, our loss stung, and so I was on a bit of a personal vendetta that helped fuel our success,” he laughs, “In 2027, with a decisive victory under our belts, we’ll be back even more motivated.”  

Challenges and Rewards

For Mudia Kingsley-Odia, TUSC Secretary, just being there was a kind of triumph. Unfamiliar with the tradition as a freshman, then studying in Abu Dhabi during his sophomore spring semester, he finally stepped onto the floor as a junior, and promptly helped the team place first in cup stacking. "It was my personal highlight of the day," he recalls.

One of the unexpected challenges of the All-University Games is logistics. Events overlap and participants who signed up for multiple competitions find themselves sprinting between rounds. The Tandon team burned energy not just competing, but navigating. Ruoyan Zhang, the Tandon Undergraduate Student Council (TUSC) President, took note. One of the team's biggest lessons, she said, was the importance of early preparation and confirming participant attendance well in advance. "The tight deadline for roster submission limited us in some ways," she observes, “so next year we plan to take that into account and field a stronger team than ever before.”

A Chant Heard Across the Gym

A winning team needs a rallying cry — and Tandon had one. Before the games, the team quickly wrote what became their unofficial anthem for the night:

NYU Tandon, bold and strong!
Brooklyn is where we belong!
Code it, build it, run it, done!
NYU Tandon — Number One!

Beyond Stereotypes

Ask any engineering student, and they'll tell you: the image of the solitary, unathletic, socially awkward engineer who never looks up from a problem set is, at best, a caricature. The All-University Games gave Tandon's students a very public arena in which to prove it.

"Engineers come in all shapes, sizes, and personality types," says Demetri, who — tall and gregarious — is living proof of that assertion. "We have school spirit. We're team-oriented. We like to have fun."

And on February 17, with a 32-point victory and a massive trophy to bring back to Brooklyn, Tandon's students made that case in the most unambiguous terms possible.

View more photos of the games at the Washington Square News.

The Participants

• Majeed Bakhsh
• Ahan Bhakare
• Vincent Capone
• Nobodit Chowdhury
• Kyle Doodnauth
• Jai Gupta
• Shaurya Gupta
• Antolin Maesestre Ismael
• Mudia Kingsley-Odia
• Demetri Lopez
• Zachary NemniJones
• Nazmus Sakib
• Takshil Sanghvi
• Bhavya Sanjana
• Aditya Upadhyay
• Ruoyan Zhang