Congratulations Ashley!

Albany Area Math Circle veteran So Yeun (Ashley) Cho, a senior at Emma Willard School, brought home yet another beautiful sparkling crystal trophy this year for a performance even more outstanding than last year in an even more stellar field of over two hundred extremely mathematically talented young women from all over the country and Canada at the Math Prize for Girls held at the Courant Institute of Mathematics on Saturday.



This year, Ashley was tied for 18th place, only one question away from top 10 tiebreak standing! Last year, she was tied for 25th place, two questions away from the top 10.

Thanks to her Honorable Mention score at the Math Prize for Girls this year, Ashley will be invited to write the Math Prize Olympiad in December, a four hour olympiad-style contest with proof-based problems designed to be comparable to those on the China Girls Math Olympiad.

In both 2009 and 2010, Ashley's score at the Math Prize for Girls was the highest for anyone from New York State! The complete list of high scorers is available here.

This year's field of over 200 competitors was even stronger than last year's field, because the success of last year's event caused much greater interest and many more girls from all over the country applied to participate. The event has attracted additional major new sponsorship this year, Akamai Foundation, which also sponsors the Math Olympiad Summer Program and the US team to the China Girls Math Olympiad. Thanks to additional sponsorship, more exceptionally strong students from distant locations were able to participate this year, because all 2010 USAMO qualifiers received travel subsidies. In addition, the Math Prize for Girls accepted applications from Canadian students for the first time this year. Thus, Ashley's stronger performance this year is all the more impressive, since the field is even stronger.

Ashley has been an outstanding leader and inspirational model for her fellow students at Emma Willard and for all students in our math circle. She has also been a leader among all students in New York, with many other recognitions including qualifying for the USA Math Olympiad in 2008, team high scorer honors on our A team at the state math tournament, NYSML, last April, selection for the Upstate NY ARML A team where she contributed to the epic first-place super relay in 2009, and selection to participate in Princeton's Summer Workshop in Mathematics last summer.

Ashley has mentored and coached her fellow students on Emma Willard's Harvard-MIT Math Tournament (HMMT). Next weekend she will join seven of our math circle's strongest and most experienced students to represent Albany Area Math Circle at PUMaC (Princeton University Math Contest), an extremely challenging math contest.

Our first-timers at Math Prize for Girls this year were Sherry He and Wan Wan Fei, also from Emma Willard, Cecilia Holodak and Elizabeth Parizh from Niskayuna High School, and Gili Rusak from Shaker Junior High School. The photo at the top of this post shows Wan Wan, Albany Area Math Circle founding member Alison Miller, and Sherry celebrating along with Ashley.

Congratulations to all the participants in Math Prize for Girls this year, from Albany Area Math Circle, from all over New York State, from all over the country and Canada, too!

More information and photos will appear on this blog in the coming days!