Students Hit All the Right Numbers at Math Competition

Lehigh University conducted the thirty-ninth annual Mathematics Contest for High School Students on Sunday, March 2. Ellen Zhang ’21, Tommy Wang ’21, Forest Ho-Chen ’22, and Justin Liu ’21, represented George School in the two-hour written exam. In total, two hundred and fifty students competed from seventy schools.

George School students finished third among twenty other tenth grade teams. If you are a numbers cruncher, that means the students finished in the top 15 percent or scored better than 85 percent of their competitors. “This contest is perhaps the most challenging math test on the east coast,” said Kevin Moon, head of the math department. “It was a very hard test this year.”

Ellen was George School’s top scorer answering eighteen of forty questions correctly. Forest was the seventh highest scorer among sixty-one ninth graders.

George School’s math department has grown in strength over the years. In February one hundred and three students sat for the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) exam. Ellen, Forest, Tommy Ding Wang ’21, and Leo Li ’20 qualify for the next level of exam, the AIME. “The AMC tests were very tough this year, the most challenging I have seen in many years,” said Kevin. “For ninth and tenth graders this puts them in the top 3 percent of the strongest math students in the country. For eleventh and twelfth graders, this is the top 5 percent. Ellen, Tommy, and Leo have extraordinary scores. I am so proud.”

This past fall, the George School Math Team was ranked twentieth in the nation.