The Trinity College School math department was eager to celebrate – in person – the success of our students on the University of Waterloo Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC) contests over the 2021-2022 school year, at the annual Math Awards chapel on Thursday, June 2nd. Thanks to the hard work of our mathletes and coaches, the School placed first in our zone in five of the nine contests!
Each year, the CEMC offers a slate of contests that challenge students at various grade levels, with students placing in the top 25% globally earning recognition in the form of a certificate of distinction and math lapel pin (repeat winners earn a gold pin). For context, thousands of students worldwide take on the challenge of these contests, so a top 25% placement is a significant and laudable achievement. Also recognized were the top TCS students in each contest, who are named school champions.
The math competition season started back in November when a group of students who had done well in previous years were invited to write the Canadian Intermediate and Senior Mathematics Contests. At the Intermediate level, Alex Tang, Landon Demrovsky, Christina Jia and Nicolas Shi earned distinction, with Nicolas achieving school champion honours. In the Senior contest, Oliver Lynn and Tae-Kyeong Kim (school champion) attained distinction.
In the Grade 9 Pascal Contest, all three of the students earning top 25% scores are actually from the Junior School Grade 8 class. They are Roger Zhang, Caden Keystone and school champion Riley McKernan. The top 10 students in the Pascal were invited to write a further, tougher problem-solving contest, the Fryer. Again, our three distinction winners were Junior School students: Rebecca Zhang, Riley McKernan and Roger Zhang (school champion).
At the Grade 10 level, an incredible 10 students placed in the top 25% on the Cayley Contest, earning TCS zone champion status. Kudos to Aoo Audsabumrungrat, Haron Wang, Junhyeong Hong, Alex Tang, Christina Jia, Arjun Sharma, Eason Fan, Nicolas Shi, Eric Jin and school champion Eurus Wu. Aoo, Haron, Arjun, Eric and Nicolas also earned distinction on the challenging Galois Contest. A Grade 9 student, Nicolas achieved his second school champion honours on this Grade 10 problem-solving test.
The Grade 11 Fermat Contest also produced a zone championship for TCS, with 10 students earning distinction: Danny Liu, Sara Yang, Andrew Li, Isabella Wu, Oliver Lynn, Hannah Hwang, Allen Tang, Jack Sprayson, Tae-Kyeong Kim and Jasmine Chen. Special congratulations go to Jasmine, who was named school champion and achieved a perfect score of 150 on the Fermat. On the rigourous Grade 11 Hypatia problem-solving contest, just one student – Tae-Kyeong Kim – attained distinction and, thus, was named school champion.
The longest and most challenging of the math contests – the Grade 12 Euclid – was written by 21 TCS students. Two mathletes scored in the top 25% internationally: Grade 10 student Eric Jin and Grade 11 student Tae-Kyeong Kim (earning his third school champion title this year).
Congratulations to all of these award recipients, and to every student who challenged themselves with this year’s math contests! The math teachers encourage all students to come out and test themselves when the math contest season begins again in September.
