USAMO Congratulations!!

Congratulations to the following Albany Area Math Circle students who have qualified for the USA Math Olympiad(USAMO):

Andrew Ardito

Matthew Babbitt

Schuyler Smith

Yipu Wang

Jay White

According to USAMO website:

The USAMO (United States of America Mathematics Olympiad) provides a means of identifying and encouraging the most creative secondary mathematics students in the country. It serves to indicate the talent of those who may become leaders in the mathematical sciences of the next generation. The USAMO is part of a worldwide system of national mathematics competitions, a movement in which both educators and research mathematicians are engaged in recognizing and celebrating the imagination and resourcefulness of our youth.

The USAMO is a nine-hour two-day proof-based contest with six difficult problems that would "challenge most professional mathematicians," according to the Mathematical Association of America, the professional society which sponsors it.    Each year, hundreds of thousands of the strongest high school math students in the country take the challenging AMC preliminary series of exams and only the top 500-scoring students on those exams qualify for invitations to write the USAMO.  It is remarkable that five Albany Area Math Circle students are among the 500 this year--our qualifying students constitute 1% of the top-scoring students in the USA and Canada this year, even though the Albany area surely constitutes much less than 1% of the total population of the US and Canada.

According to the USAMO website:

The twelve top scoring USAMO students are invited to a two day Olympiad Awards Ceremony in Washington, DC sponsored by the MAA, the Akamai Foundation, the Microsoft Corporation and the Matilda Wilson Foundation. Six of these twelve students will comprise the United States team that competes in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). The IMO began in 1959; the USA has participated since 1974.

The USAMO will take place on Tuesday April 28 and Wednesday April 29.  Congratulations and best of luck!