Returning mathletes look to surpass the USAMO

On April 27 and 28, in a small office in the 300 wing, five students took the prestigious USAMO exam, the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, a grueling nine-hour test for which only around 250 students in the country qualify for annually. Five students from Saratoga qualified for it this year, with one, senior Albert Gu, progressing on to the next round.

Gu achieved an honorable mention of the Olympiad, one point short of being named a winner. Along with the students with the 50 highest scores in the nation, he will attend the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP), a mathematics summer camp, and will have a chance to represent the United States in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). The top 12 scorers of USAMO attend an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.

Gu, accompanied by senior Amol Aggarwal and junior Brian Wei all returned to represent their school and take the USAMO this year. Sophomores Amanda Chow and Edward Dong qualified for the first time.

“USAMO was more difficult than the qualifying tests,” Dong said. “It was mostly proofs rather than actual problems.”

Usually, the school ranks high, despite intense competition from prestigious private schools, such as Phillips Exeter Academy in New York. Dong feels that the school has had an excellent representation at past competitions.

“Our schoolwide averages aren’t necessarily better than those of the schools around us,” said Dong. “We have that small group of intellectuals at our school who pass the tests and give us a good name.”

Another competitor, freshman Priyanka Krishnamurthi, has the same beliefs about Saratoga’s math team. To have five qualifiers for USAMO is an huge accomplishment in itself, Krishnamurthi said.
To be eligible to take USAMO, students must first take the American Mathematics Contest (AMC) and have a solid background in algebra and geometry classes. The test also requires a creative mind, according to competitor Amanda Chow.

Students can take either the AMC 10 or AMC 12 initially, multiple choice examinations each geared toward those respective grade levels. A score of 120 or better is required to pass and advance past the AMC 10, and a 100 is required to pass the AMC 12.

Only 2.5 percent of students who take AMC 10 qualify for the next test: the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME). However, the qualifying AMC often excludes many students from participating in the secondary tier of the competition, the AIME.

“I prepared by solving previously used test questions,” Krishnamurthi said. “The test was as difficult I’d expected, but I had become comfortable working with those types of problems.”

In order to adapt to the intensity of the problems, the “mathletes”, as they are affectionately known by the math club’s adviser, P.J. Yim, met every Saturday beginning in March before the exams to review important concepts. Participators thought of it as a useful, more personal version of tutorial.

In the last three years, the school has not had any qualifiers for IMO, but has had qualifiers for MOSP in seniors Aggarwal and Gu, and juniors Wei, Zeng, and Zhang. Gu and Aggarwal have attended MOSP three times. This year, Gu will try for the last time to reach the prestigious IMO.