The Bay Area’s annual middle-school Math League competition kicked off with an intense litany of No. 2 pencils scraping against paper. Then a rising sixth grader competing in her first math contest, freshman Catherine Wu was shaking in her shoes. Doubting that she did well, she left before the awards ceremony even started.
When the contest results were released, Wu was surprised to learn that she placed fourth within her grade level. It motivated her to study even harder, and since then, Wu has competed in several national competitions, such as the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME). Last summer, she placed seventh overall in the annual Math Prize for Girls, a math contest hosted by MIT.
“I have gained confidence through math,” Wu said. “I used to be rather shy, but in math club and math class, I like to help others at what I am good at and learn from their strengths.”
Wu began learning math outside of school in third grade, when her father started giving her math problems to think about and experiment with new problem-solving techniques. She said math is a hobby and “a moment of calm” in her life.
“All areas of math are connected. There are correlations between the most unexpected subjects,” Wu said. “I like that it can be applied to the real world — we use it every day without thinking about it. There is so much that we don't know that is waiting to be discovered.”
Later in her sixth grade year, Wu scored among the top 2.5 percent of the American Mathematical Competition’s 10th and 12th grade exams, which qualified her for the AIME in March.
Two years later, she entered the USA Junior Mathematical Olympiad, a contest for students in 10th grade or below who qualify through the AMC 10.
“Generally, you do worse when you're nervous [during competitions], so I try not to think about the results, [but] the problems themselves,” Wu said. “As long as I prepared as well as I could and tried my best, it's OK if I mess up or make a silly mistake. ”
That same year, Wu competed at Math Prize for Girls. She scored fourth among the top 300 American and Canadian middle school and high school scorers on the AMC 10 and 12, and won the Youth Prize as the top scorer among girls in ninth grade and below.
“Especially considering I was competing against MOSP [Math Olympiad Summer Program] qualifiers, who are basically the top 50 [mathletes] of America and Canada, I had really only dared hope for honorable mention,” Wu said. “[I] hadn't even been expecting that, so I was really excited.”
All three contests motivated her to keep learning and improving. This year, Wu plans to shoot for MOSP, an intensive summer program geared at the selection of team members to represent the U.S. in the International Mathematical Olympiad.
“Successes like the above contests were good motivation, but could-have-been-better results also taught me that there will always be people better than me, and there will always be more to learn,” Wu said. “Through math, I've learned to work hard to achieve my goals, and that every second you put in will improve your skills and pay off at the end.”