After scoring highly on the American Mathematics Competition 12 (AMC 12) and American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), junior Charles Lien advanced to the United States of America Math Olympiad (USAMO).

“I scored 12/15 [on the AIME] and I was really surprised,” Charles said.

Charles was the sole student at the school to advance to USAMO out of the seven students who took part in the AIME competition. Qualifying for the USAMO is considered highly prestigious, as in 2013, only 264 of 35,000 students competing were offered invitations.

“The math is quite different from school math… there are more word problems than in school. and you aren’t usually asked to ‘solve this equation,’” Charles said.

The USAMO is a two day nine hour essay/proof exam, and should Charles score over 20 points, he will be able to join the selective Math Olympiad Summer Camp (MOSP), which is an intensive training camp for the International Math Olympiad (IMO).

“I don’t think I’m going to make it past USAMO this year,” Charles said. “Because USAMO questions are proofs and I’m not good at proofs. But hopefully, hopefully I’ll make it next year.”

Freshman Andrew Lee, sophomore Gram Knight, junior Robert Chin and seniors Matthew Ruehle and Michael Zhu were the six other students who advanced to the AIME competition after scoring within either the top 5% of the AMC 12 or the top 2.5% of the AMC 10.