Los Angeles City College (LACC) is hosting a math competition that is open to middle school and high school students that will occur on Mar. 2. While the competition is open to all students who are eligible, the AHS Math Team will be representing the school at the competition. This will be the 70th competition as it has been held annually during March since 1954. The school states that “the contest is held to increase interest in mathematics among local high school students and to attract talented students to LACC,” on their website.

In the registration process, the application form asks the applicants if they are interested in a scholarship to attend LA City College full-time or part-time after high school. This ties in with the competition’s award of “$1,600 in cash prizes for the top 6 students, several $4,000 scholarships to attend LACC full-time, and several $1,000 scholarships to attend LACC part-time while still in high school.” Furthermore, students are encouraged to meet students from other schools, talk with LACC professors and the LACC President, Mary Gallagher, and explore the campus. Last year, AHS placed second overall. The score is calculated through the accumulation of the three (or fewer) students from that school with the highest scores. Sophomore Merrick Hua, under the guidance of Mrs. Mylinh Crew, placed second individually last year as a freshman. Merrick says that he chose LACC because “it’s relatively close and just another place to hone your competitive skills for bigger competitions.” He also added how “he is trying to compete as much as possible in order to build up more experience,” and his goal “is to go for the number one spot since I went two last year.” Junior Mark Lau followed in sixth place under Ms. Jean Hong, and junior Alicia Ying secured 22nd place under Mrs. Crew.

LACC also offers practice questions for participants to give them a better insight on how the test will be formatted and the level of difficulty it will be. The full score of the test is 200, and in the past 17 years, no student has ever achieved the maximum score. Merrick currently holds the highest score of any AHS student, with a score of 171 out of 200. Merrick explained how “the test is graded by two people who each give you a maximum of ten points for each of the ten problems.” Along with the practice questions, LACC also has a section for donations to support the long-running math competition. The college calls for a cash donation to fund the scholarship prizes. Moreover, many past competitors have gone on to pursue careers in STEM.

Overall, the Math Team is doing very well in terms of standings for this particular competition. We wish the best of luck to the competitors for this and future competitions!