On April 27, the results of the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) and the United States of America Junior Mathematical Olympiad (USAJMO) were released. Two Choate students placed significantly high, with Ryan Yang ’23 placing 23rd on the USAMO and Peyton Li ’25 placing 15th on the USAJMO.
The competitions are extremely difficult to qualify for. To begin the qualification process, over 159,000 students took the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) 10 and 12. The AMC is a series of problem-solving examinations. The top 2.5% of scorers on the AMC 10 and top 5% of scorers on the AMC 12 were then invited to the American Invitational Mathematics Exam (AIME).
Top-scoring students on both the AMC 12 and AIME were invited to the USAMO, and the top-scoring students on both the AMC 10 and AIME were invited to the USAJMO. In each competition, only 200-300 students qualify out of the initial 159,000. Prior to Yang and Li, only two students in Choate history were recognized as winners or honorable mentions for the USAMO or USAJMO: Jacob Klegar ’16 and David E. Speyer ’98.
To prepare for the USAMO and USAJMO respectively, Yang and Li studied past exams and practice problems. However, both agreed that adequate preparation requires longer-term mathematical education. “It is supposed to be doable with high school knowledge only,” said Li. “But you will never do well in these competitions with just your high school curriculum.”
The exam consists of proof problems, which often require the usage of complex theorems and strategies. “Each of them is proving a theorem,” said Yang, “and you’re learning the theorem very deeply.”
For Yang, completing the exams widened his mathematical ability. “I really enjoy that I have this really broad set of paths or theorems that I just have in my repertoire now,” he said. “I have a super strong understanding of math that lets me actually make progress and contribute to fields, and figure out things that people have never figured out before.”
