When junior Celine Liang entered the gigantic auditorium at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sept. 27, she felt shivers of nerves going down her spine. She, along with hundreds of seventh grade to 12th grade girls from over 250 middle schools and high schools around United States and Canada, were all there to compete in the sixth Annual Advantage Testing Foundation Math Prize for Girls.

It turned out that Liang was the best among the girls, answering 17 out of the 20 brutally hard questions correct in two and a half hours and winning about $30,000 in scholarship money as a result of it.

“When they called my name during the awards, I was extremely surprised because there were a lot of very strong competitors,” Liang said. “I guess I never expected to win against some of the other girls.”

The MIT competition is the largest math contest specifically for girls in the world.

Besides Liang’s stunning success, junior Kristine Zhang, who also competed last year, did well, receiving an honorable mention distinction. She felt that this year’s problems were more challenging than the ones from the previous year, but she still completed around 12 of them before running out of time.

“I enjoy that you get to travel and be able to do a lot of social events,” Zhang said. “There’s a social aspect of it, and then you also do the math.”