Hi guys! I wanted to start a new thread for the 2025 SUMaC application. If anyone has attended it before, please let me know how it is and how hard it is to get in and how much do they weigh your admission exam and essays. Also please share your stats!!!
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Hey! I did SUMaC last summer, probably the best four weeks of my life. Here’s the info you asked for to help out:
stats i submitted when i applied (intl. 11th grader)
- sat: 1470 (690r/790m)
- aps: spanish lang 5, world history 5
- competition math: none
- ecs: volunteered teaching math at a shelter + some honor societies/clubs/tutoring
as for the pset try not to take “the easy way out” when solving the questions, and dont be super lengthy either. be concise and creative. from what i’m aware this is the part they weigh most.
if you get admitted, make sure to learn modular arithmetic (you will need it a lot) and some other stuff they list out on the website. youll have a lot of fun and meet wonderful people! 
just reopened my computer and had this tab open lol. I remember I found almost no info on the sumac experience when I was applying, so I’m going to share a lot of valuable info! Hope this helps (sorry if it’s not formally written)!
my daily routine at sumac (mon-thu, i did residential program 1):
- usually id get up at 6am, hit the gym, shower and eat breakfast
- classes are from 9am to 11:30am iirc, they were all pretty engaging!
- pset hours are from 1pm to 3:30pm. they are challenging but really fun to do.
- in the afternoons we’d frequently have pretty interesting lectures by guest speakers on a lot of different topics (art, applied math, philosophy, etc)
- we’d spend our nights mostly bonding w/ each other or finishing up problem sets
Ok so Fridays are pretty interesting! What they do is split up your program into different groups then assign a topic to each group. You then have to do an independent research project (or team up with people from your group, whatever you please) and work on it each Friday basically. The last two days of the program are spent presenting this project (each person will get approx 10min) and it’s pretty fun!
other program details (some are super specific others are more broad) i might as well throw in:
- the people at sumac are really fun, it’s not just everyone working on math 24/7 so don’t worry about that! Everyone is also super bright and smart and willing to help. It’s a super warm community I really cherished, don’t be afraid to ask for help with anything. There will be a lot of opportunities to bond with others, so be excited for those moments!
- there are some pretty neat field trips and events throughout the program (angel island hike, downtown palo alto, california academy of sciences, july 4th celebration at lake lagunita, etc)
- a lot of the questions on the psets require you to be pretty ingenuous, so look out for those!
- the ice cream at decadence is 10/10
- if youre ordering anything online (unless it’s like ubereats or smth like that) ship it to the address they tell you instead of your residential building
- the weather is super hot, bring a fan for your room if you have one
(if you don’t have one dw, they will probably give you one) - sumac is selective but holistic. when applying, don’t ever think your stats aren’t “good enough,” i know people more qualified than me who got rejected. show your passion for math in your psets and essays!
- don’t stress out. everyone in the program will be there to help you.
- Best four weeks of my life. I can’t understate that enough.
if you need any more advice lmk, the application process was kinda rough for me so I’d be really happy to help anyone who needs it! (not with the application pset though) I won’t be checking this forum super often but if I see anything I’ll reply!
best of luck to everyone who is applying! 
Not to come off as trying to find a shortcut to admissions, but in your experience, how many problems on the application problem set did you actually need to have like a 100% complete-and-rigorous answer for general admissions? I’m currently working on this year’s problem set (6 questions), and I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to rigorously finish all 6.
Not necessarily saying that I can only solve like 2, but I already have 4 of them rigorously solved, with one of them being a very creative solution that I am proud of, and I think I could probably max out at 5 rigorous solutions and 1 VERY solid attempt/chain of thought.
Additionally, how would you say I should write my essays to demonstrate passion without sounding robotic/copy-paste in terms of simply saying “I am self-motivated and love math”? Anecdotes? Fancy writing like for college essays?
Thanks so much for considering my onslaught of questions!
thank you so much!!!
Does SUMaC only allow one recommendation to be sent??
Some people said they submitted more than one but on my side I only see I can only submit one
Hey! For your first question, I tried to make all of my responses as complete as possible. If you can “max out at 5 rigorous solutions and 1 VERY solid attempt/chain of thought,” that’s ok! They’re judging you based on your creativity, not how many you get right or how many pages you pump out, so don’t worry about that. For your second question, I mainly used anecdotes. I forgot about all the prompts but, on one essay I talked about how my algebra II class had no math teacher for like 3 months so I helped the substitute redirect students to proper resources and grade the midterms, on the other I talked about a math-based research project I made on a local issue, and on the other I envisioned myself as an applied mathematician and said it all started at sumac. Make sure to actually respond to the prompts instead of dodging the question to fit in a certain experience. Best of luck! (if I wasn’t too clear on something or responded too generically please lmk)
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I only sent one recommendation from my math teacher, I think that’s good enough. quantity > quality, best of luck on your apps!
i meant quality > quantity oops
For the admissions exam, how many solves would you say one should have to have a chance for SUMaC? Would it be okay if I brute forced some questions or do my solutions have to be nice and rigorous? Also my semester doesn’t end before the deadline for SUMaC so my transcript doesn’t reflect my grades for first semester of this year. However, on the application they do request it.
also for the exam did you guys type it or hand write it. Im afraid my hand writing isn’t the neatness and this would affect my final results
I typed them out using Overleaf (LaTeX), but I made two docs I’ll stitch together: one with the solutions themselves, and the other with like actual images of my hand work and explanations of my thought process.
Our schedule is super busy this summer, we are looking at the online version, has anyone done that?
oh im just afraid that they are going to judge cuz I wrote it by hand
For my answers, alot of them are pretty brute force, although for most of them, I have adjustments and tricks to narrow down the range of answers I need to brute force. I’m really concerned that I can’t seem to be “creative” enough. Should i focus more on writing appealing essays instead?
Same here. I have a similar problem. I think it should be fine but I think someone accepted should answer.
good luck everyone!
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Is it just me or the questions this year were much easier than questions from 2024,2023,2022 ? (or I could have absolutely fumbled on all of them 
)
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I felt the same. I still probably failed though lol. How do you all think you did on app?
I found them to be mostly trivial (outside of 4b, which took me a little while to prove). It seems like it was mostly approachable even for someone with no competition math (which is my situation).
Overall, I feel confident on 1, 2, 3, 4a, 5a, 5c, and 6a. I think I have fully fleshed-out solutions for those, but 4b, 5b (especially with the sheer number of tours), and 6b were a little trickier and there might have been some nuance that I missed.
I think my essays back my narrative pretty well, and I’m somewhat confident in my chances! My recommendation is probably really strong, and I think I highlighted my math passions pretty well in my app overall.
Are we allowed to discuss the answers/way of solution now that the deadlines have passed?