2010 USAMO/JMO and BS

Prep School Admissions
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<p>^gonnastop</p>

<p>Any one went to your school, which is likely to have a training regime for the Olympiad in China will do well at USAMO. But for some one undergos the U.S. education system it’s a lot harder, simply because problem solving isn’t accessible to majority of them; whereas in China almost every school does Olympiad math like crazy. Think about the high school level basketball teams in the U.S. v.s. the ones in China, the different levels of accessibility to sports create a huge gap between an average Chinese basketball team and an average American basketball team. btw, don’t say AIME is easy unless you actually qualify and score well on it. Trust me, it’s not as easy as you think.</p>

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<p>One kid from Brooks qualified for USAMO this year! Four kids from Brooks qualified for AIME. Brooks came in 5th out of 171 participating schools in the New England Math League Test this year.</p>

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<p>^bestswimmer</p>

<p>Yeah, that’s why I don’t like my school THAT much. But please understand that, with a population of 1.3 billion, the only “fair” way to admit kids is let them take tests. Then, every school becomes testprep-oriented and math/natural sciences-oriented. It’s the best way for China now. Students from poor families still have a chance. </p>

<p>We don’t “care” about sports as much as Americans do. I mean our parents. We have different systems. The Chinese one might sound ridiculous to you–kids go to “sports schools” at a very young age(3 or 5). They don’t take normal lessons and train hard 24/7. They go to national teams and the government takes care of everything. And that’s how we got 40(?) gold in the olympics.</p>

<p>We are different countries with different values. The #1 thing for China is to make everyone full and access clean water. </p>

<p>Please do not judge. We are just different. </p>

<p>Btw
Sorry about the assumption. I used the word “seems”.</p>

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<p>Just a note on Lexington High School and math - they do very well in competitions and the middle schools are excellent in MathCounts. But, the system is rather rigid, particularly in the middle schools. The really high flying math kids will have no ability to go past calc BC.</p>

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<p>^jg0339
The kid from Brooks who qualified USAMO was a Thai scholar who got a silver medal at IOI. A very determined kid.</p>

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<p>What’s IOI?
A Thai scholar? The King sponsor him to finish American BS and college? That kind of scholar?</p>

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<p>The 4th grader from Texas also competed last year in the USAMO as a 3rd grader and had a perfect score on the qualifying exam. Amazing!</p>

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<p>That 4th grader is very impressive, hopefully he will qualify MOP before high school. I say he has a good chance end up at Exeter since Zuming recruites math people like crazy. If anyone loves math to death then try your best to get into Exeter, which has a training regime layed out for you, though the competition inside of the school will be ferocious. On the other hand if you go to a school like Brooks or Williston, you will have to be extremely resourceful and determined to qualify for USAMO. As I said the Brooks guy got a silver medal at IOI and the Williston guy used to go to training camps at Chinese state/province level, these people were good enough to qualify USAMO regardless of which boarding schools to attend.</p>

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<p>USAMO winners </p>

<p>Timothy Chu, Lynbrook High School, San Jose, California.
Calvin Deng, William G. Enloe High School, Cary, North Carolina.
Michael Druggan, Tates Creek High School, Lexington, Kentucky.
Brian Hamrick, Thomas Jefferson High School For Science & Technology, Annandale, Virginia.
Travis Hance, Lakota West High School, West Chester, Ohio.
Xiaoyu He, Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, Acton, Massachusetts.
Mitchell Lee, Thomas Jefferson High School For Science & Technology, Annandale, Virginia.
In-Sung Na, Northern Valley Regional At Old Tappan, Old Tappan, New Jersey.
Evan O’Dorney, Berkeley Math Circle, Danville, California.
Toan Duc Phan, Taft School, Watertown, Connecticut.
Hunter Spink, Western Canada High School, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Allen Yuan, Detroit Country Day School, Farmington, Michigan.</p>

<p>USAJMO winners </p>

<p>Yury Aglyamov, Liberal Arts & Science Academy High School, Austin, Texas.
Ravi Bajaj, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire
Evan Chen, Horner Junior High School, Fremont, California.
Zijing Gao, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Gil Goldshlager, Walton High School, Marietta, Georgia.
Youkow Homma, Carmel High School, Carmel, Indiana.
Jesse Kim, Henry M. Gunn High School, Palo Alto, California.
Sadik Shahidain, Princeton High School, Princeton, New Jersey.
Alexander Smith, La Plata High School, La Plata, Maryland.
Susan Di Yun Sun, West Vancouver SS, West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Jiaqi Xie, Cypress Bay High School, Weston, Florida.
Jeffrey Yan, Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, California.
Kevin Zhou, Woburn Cl., North York, Ontario, Canada.</p>

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<p>The Taft guy is on Vietnamese’ national team and received a Silver? medal at IMO before coming to Taft. In other words, no matter which school Toan goes to he will win USAMO anyways.</p>

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<p>@bestswimmer: That’s not true. You can look on the IMO website, none of the names above ever won IMO.</p>

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<p>Tim. Chu was an alternate for IMO last year(I think)
I’m still surprised that neither Wenyu Cao(Andover) nor David Yang won USAMO.</p>

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<p>@diamon153: That’s not true either. Look up USAMO and IMO websites. </p>

<p>Why do we keep trying to find “excuses”? These guys are excellent, not because “they’ve been to IMO since 5 years old etc.” lol :)</p>

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<p>We are not trying to find excuses; we are simply trying to find out who’s returning.
Apparently, Evan is the only person who won USAMO and went to IMO last year.
And Timothy Chu was definitely last year’s usa alternate</p>

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<p>“An awards ceremony for the 12 USAMO winners will be held in Washington, D.C… The 12 USAMO winners will take the team selection test (TST) to try to qualify for the U.S. IMO team between June 9-16. The six students with highest combined USAMO and TST scores will compete in the 2009 IMO”</p>

<p>I thought the other 6 would be IMO alternates? T. Chu was not among the 12 USAMO winners, he did not take the TST, how could he be IMO alternate? Correct me if I missed something here.</p>

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<p>^boardingschool
Excuses? My point is many USAMO qualifiers are at USAMO level prior to coming to boarding school. In other words, regardless where they go they will always end up with USAMO qualification due to their own self-determination.</p>

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<p>@bestswimmer: Mmm… you gave only 1 example (the Taft guy), which turned out to be wrong (he’d never been in any IMO team or qualified for USAMO before Taft). Sorry, I’m just confused. Can you give more examples of those “many qualifiers before boarding school”?</p>

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<p>…I know the Taft guy in person… I have no idea what are you talking about.</p>

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<p>They choose top 7 by combining USAMO and TST scores and the 7th place becomes the alternate.
For Timothy Chu, he qualified for blue mop last year and AMC committee allowed blue moppers to take TST also. Somehow, Tim did really well on TST and became the alternate.</p>

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<p>Thanks for clarification, I didn’t know they allowed more than 12 to take the TST.
@bestswimmer: Look on USAMO and IMO websites, that guy never participated in IMO or qualified for USAMO before Taft. If he told you he won medal in IMO (as you said), he must be babbling because his name has never been in IMO winner list. Also, can you give more examples of those “many qualifiers before boarding school”?
It’s not personal offense, I just want accurate information.</p>