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Math Team Competitions Expand Collaboration and Skill Sets

I joined the George School Math Team my freshman year at the annual Club Fair. Personally, I had been heavily involved in mathematics since middle school and looked forward to the continued challenge. However, the Math Team is very inclusive to all who want to join: you are free to choose the level of your involvement. Usually, those who are invested in mathematics and/or want to expose themselves to the field are the most involved, whereas those who just want to try it out for a few weeks.

To give some context, the GS Math Team participates in various competitions throughout the year, mostly team-based competitions. Recently, we competed together in Math Madness, an online bracket-style match, and Purple Comet, a 90-minute problem set of 30 problems that we solve as a team. Reflecting back on my experiences within the club, the GS Math Team is an environment that nurtures individual excellence and team collaboration.

Every time I participated in Math Madness, for example, I tried to beat or maintain my past couple scores and discussed problems with others to learn from the mistakes I made. In competing with 7 others during Purple Comet, we all specialized in a specific area of problems we were strongest at, so I focused on combinatorics this year. Whereas I focus on improving my weaknesses as an individual, I play to my strengths as part of the team.

Ellen is a day student from Yardley, Pennsylvania. She was placed on the Honor Roll of Distinction with a score in the top one percent of the national test-takers of the Mathematical Association of America’s AMC exam.

The George School Math Team scored another winning season during the 2020-2021 academic year, starting with their third straight first-place win in the Philadelphia Math League competition. The team also captured four of the top ten individual spots. This year the team ended with a 6-1 record in the Math Madness competition and was ranked 39th among the 700+ schools that participated. Math Team scored an 18th place finish out of 188 high school teams in the winter international Trinity Math Contest (TrinMaC). The team was the top school in Pennsylvania in the Purple Comet spring competition and in the small high school division ranked 21st out of 884 worldwide. 

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