Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006, The OG, news

Sophomore Alex Zhai has been named one of 12 winners in the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, the nation's most rigorous and prestigious contest for high school math students.

Zhai earned 41 out of 42 possible points. Only one other student, a junior from Montgomery Blair High School in Maryland, scored higher.

Zhai and the 11 other USAMO winners will advance to a final round of exams to determine which of them will participate in this summer's International Mathematical Olympiad, where they would compete against the world's best young mathematicians. Only six students will be selected for the U.S. team. The IMO will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, July 11-17.

The USAMO is a six-question, nine-hour exam given over two days. Zhai took his exam on April 18 and 19. According to the Mathematical Association of America, 431 students participated in the USAMO, based on their scores in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination. The average USAMO score was 9.0372.

This is the third year Zhai has earned an invitation to compete in the USAMO, but it is the first time he has finished in the top 12.

In 2004, Zhai, then a subfreshman, was one of only 16 seventh- or eighth-graders in the country to participate in the USAMO. In 2005, Zhai was one of only 17 high school students in Illinois to be invited.

Also in 2005, Zhai was among only 55 students selected nationwide to attend the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program, which is designed for the most promising math students in the United States.

If you'd like to learn more about what it's like to compete in the International Math Olympiad, see Steve Olson's 2004 book, “Count Down: Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World's Toughest Math Competition.”

— Gargoyle staff