Ninety Choate math enthusiasts competed in the annual American Mathematics Contest (AMC) on February 12th. Students who score above a certain cutoff level on this nationally administered test can move ahead to the next level of competition, which will eventually select the best American math students to represent the United States in the International Math Olympiad.
The AMC is divided into three distinct levels: AMC 8, AMC 10, and AMC 12. The AMC 8 is offered to students in grades eight and below. Choate offered the AMC 10 and the AMC 12. The AMC 10 is offered to students in grades ten and below, and the AMC 12 is offered to students in grades twelve and below.
On February 12th, the first of two test dates for the AMC, fifty freshmen and sophomores competed in the AMC10 and forty students competed in the AMC12. Both tests are 75-minute, 25-question multiple choice examinations. Students receive a raw score based on the number of questions they answer correctly, the number they get wrong wrong, and the number they leave blank. A penalty is deducted for each wrong answer. The maximum raw score, for all questions answered correctly, is 150. Each year the top AMC performers are invited to take the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), the next level of competition. Students who received a score of 117 on the AMC 10 or 97.5 on the AMC 12 were selected this year to take the prestigious AIME.
13 AMC competitors qualified to take the AIME after the first test date. With scores of 129, 121.5, and 121.5, respectively, Yifan Cao ’08, Andi Wang ’10, and Chuayrach (Paan) Wangrattananon ’08 were named the AMC 12 school winners. With a score of 130.5, Andrew Sin Kim ’10 was the school winner of the AMC 10. In addition to these four school winners, eight AMC 12 competitors and one AMC 10 competitor qualified to take the AIME. The additional students who qualified by taking the AMC 12 are Michael Lai ’09, Stephanie Choi ’09, Yoshi Shiota ’08, Aditya Rajagopalan ’09, Nikhith Naidu ’09, Boonyanuch (Prae) Numswangneth ’08, Suril Kantaria ’09, and Marian Homans-Turnbull ’08. Lea Rewinski ’11 also qualified for the AIME by taking the AMC 10 test.
This year, for the first time, Choate offered the AMC on two dates. The first test date was February 12th, but Choate also administered the test on the alternate test date, February 27th. The purpose of this move was to allow students to improve their scores and to give students who were unable to compete on the first test date a chance to try their luck. Fewer than ten Choate students participated in this second AMC, called the AMC B. Competitor Suril Kantaria speculates that the low participation may have been caused by “the administration of the test during exam week when many students had winter term exams.” After this second contest, two new competitors qualified for the AIME: Aakash Bhattacharya ’10 and Laurel Lau ’08.
After the two test dates, a total of fifteen Choate students qualified for the AIME. The AIME is a three-hour, fifteen-question examination. The AIME was administered at Choate under the supervision of long time math teacher David Doster on Wednesday, April 2nd. Students who performed well on the AIME and the AMC will qualify for the USA Math Olympiad (USAMO), a six-question, two-day, nine-hour essay/proof examination.
Last year three Choate students qualified for the highly selected USAMO. Current Math Team Captain Yifan Cao ’08 has qualified for the USAMO every year since his freshmen year and hopes to continue this streak this year.
