Aryan Patel (12) and Raymond Yao (10) have qualified for the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, a six-question, nine-hour test that will determine their eligibility for competing at the International Math Olympiad.
Patel and Yao took the test over the course of two days: four-and-half-hour intervals on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Both students scored high on the AMC (American Mathematics Competition) and the AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Examination), qualifying them for USAMO.
Roughly 250 American students have been selected to take this exam, making it highly prestigious. Patel and Yao's performance on this test will decide if they are invited to the Mathematical Olympiad Program Summer Program.
From there, attendees at the MOP are eligible to be selected for the 6-member team that represents the U.S. at the International Math Olympiad.
"The questions were really hard," admits Patel.
"You have four-and-a-half hours to prove your answer," explains Yao. "I wrote, like, four pages for one problem."
"I thought I actually was going to make it because my AIME and AMC [scores were] pretty high, so I thought I had a decent chance this year," remarks Patel.
Yao, however, was not so sure about his chances.
"I calculated my index, and it was, like, 190. And every year, it's like 220, so I was thirty points off."
Luckily, the cutoffs for this year's competition allowed Yao to be eligible for USAMO.
As for their plans after high school, Patel is attending the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Fall and is majoring in Computer Science. Yao also wants to major in Computer Science in the future.
Comments