Math Contests at Illinois

FALL 2022 UPDATE

Starting with Fall 2022, Professor Timur Oikhberg, oikhberg@illinois.edu, will be organizing our math contest activities, and this page will no longer be kept up-to-date. Current information on upcoming contests and related activities, as well as training materials and resources, will be made available to UIUC students through a Moodle course site.

If you would like to be enrolled to the Math Contest Moodle site and be added to a mailing list for upcoming math contest activities, please fill out the following form: https://go.illinois.edu/mathcontestregistration. There are no commitments or obligations that come with this registration.

If you have any questions, please contact Prof. Timur Oikhberg at oikhberg@illinois.edu.

About the UI Math Contest Program

The UI Math Contest Program is one of the most extensive and most visible in the country. It has been considerably expanded in recent years with additional contest opportunities and an enhanced training program, and participation in our events is at record levels. Our students have produced outstanding results in national competitions, culminating in an Honorable Mention for the UI Putnam Team in 2015.

Activities offered include training sessions and practice contests in the fall; several local math contests with attractive prize purses; and opportunities to participate in prestigious national and international competitions, including the William Lowell Putnam Competition.,

News and Announcements

Results of the 2022 UI Undergraduate Math Contest. The 2022 UI Undergraduate Math Contest was held March 26, 2022. The winners were Tianyue Cao and Ivan Chen, who tied for First Place. Problems and solutions can be found at the UI Math Contest Problems Archive.
Results of the 2021 Putnam Competition. Twenty-six UI students participated in the 2021 William Lowell Putnam Competition, held December 4, 2021. The top UI scorers were Brendan Biernacki and Pavle Vuksanovic, who placed in the top 200 out of 2975 participants. Contest Problems and Solutions can be found at Kiran Kedlaya's Putnam Archive.
Results of the 2021 UI Fall Math Contests. The 2021 UI Fall Math Contests, consisting of the UI Freshman Contest, and the UI Mock Putnam Exam, were held back-to-back on October 30, 2021.
Alex Jin was the winner of the Freshman Contest, followed by Praneet Rathi in second place. Taiki Aiba, Adrian Calinescu, and Anh Nam Phung received Honorable Mentions for placing third.
Ruzhang Yang won the UI Mock Putnam Exam, followed by Adithya Jain in second place, and Pavle Vuksanovic in third place. Problems and solutions can be found at the UI Math Contest Problems Archive.
Results of the 2020 UI Mock Putnam Contest. The 2020 UI Mock Putnam Contest was held December 5, 2020, the day on which the national Putnam Competition was originally scheduled to take place (which has since been rescheduled for February 2021). The top three scorers were Pavle Vuksanovic, Dinglong Wang, and Alexander Ristich. Problems and solutions can be found at the UI Math Contest Problems Archive.
Results of the 2020 UI Freshman Math Contest. 2020 UI Freshman Math Contest was held online on October 17, 2020. The contest was won by Dinglong Wang, a Freshman in Mathematics. Aaron Cho, a local high school student, placed second. Problems and solutions can be found at the UI Math Contest Problems Archive.
Results of the 2020 U of I Undergraduate Math Contest. The 2020 UI Undergraduate Math Contest was held February 22, 2020. The winner was Kieran Kaempen. Alexander Ristich and Pavle Vuksanovic tied for Second Prize. For more information click on the above link.
Results of the 2019 Putnam Competition. Twenty-eight UI students participated in the 2019 Putnam Contest, held December 7, 2019. The top UI scorer was Ruzhang Yang, who placed in the top 2% nationally and received an Honorable Mention. For more details click on the above link.
Results of the 2019 Virginia Tech Math Contest. Seventeen UI students participated in the Virginia Tech Regional Undergraduate Mathematics Contest (VTRMC), a Putnam-style contest held October 26, 2019. The highest-ranking Pavle Vuksanovic was the top-ranking local participant, placing 46th among the 758 participants nationwide. Also placing in the top 10% overall were Stephen Fan and Erin Kim.
2019 UI Fall Math Contest Results. The first two contest events of the 2018/19 academic year, the Freshman Math Contest and the UI Mock Putnam Exam, were both held on Oct. 12, 2019. Alexander Ristich won the Freshman Contest, with Pavle Vuksanovic, Ruzhang Yang, and Yipeng Yang tied for second place.. The winner of the Mock Putnam Exam was Ziyi Chen, followed by Erin Kim and Hongyi Chen in second and third place. See the above link for more information, and links to contest problems and solutions.
Results of the 2019 MCM/ICM Math Modeling Contest. The UIUC teams had one of the strongest showings ever at this contest, which took place January 24-28, 2019. Of the five participating UIUC teams, three earned a "Meritorious Winner" designation, placing among the top 8% of all teams. For a full report click on the above link.

The William Lowell Putnam Competition

The William Lowell Putnam Competition is an annual math contest for undergraduates sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America. It has been called the "world's toughest math test", and is widely considered as the most prestigious contest of its kind. More than 4000 students from colleges and universities in the United States and Canada participate in this contest each year. The Putnam competition is held simultaneously at participating universities, usually on the first Saturday of December.

The Putnam competition consists of a morning session and an afternoon session of three hours each. In each session, six problems are to be solved. The problems are graded on a 0 - 10 point scale, for a maximal score of 120 points. The problems are challenging and require considerable ingenuity and insight, but little technical knowledge beyond high school mathematics. It is extremely rare that a contestant solves all 12 problems. For example, in the 1996 Putnam competition, the highest score was 98 points, and a score of 10 (the equivalent of a single problem solved correctly) would have placed a contestant among the top third of all 2400 participants! The highest ranking participants from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in recent years have earned scores in the 40 - 60 point range and ranked in the top 100.

The Putnam competition is open to all regularly enrolled undergraduate students; for details on how to enter click on the link below. In addition to the individual competition, there is also a team competition among participating colleges. The team rank of a college is determined by the scores of three participants from that college who have to be named in advance. The team members will, of course, still be ranked as individual contestants. The 25 highest scoring individuals and the five highest scoring teams receive monetary awards. While the University of Illinois team has not made it into the money ranks in recent history (the closest we got were an 8th place in 1975 and a 9th place in 2015), during the past ten years two of our students (Yi-Wei Chan in 2009 and Haidong Gong in 2015) placed in the top 25 in the individual competition and earned $250.

Local contests

Results of these contests are available at the following link: History of local contests. For problems and solutions see the UI Math Contest Problems Archive.

The UI Mock Putnam Exam. The UI Mock Putnam Exam is a local version of the Putnam Exam, held each year in early fall. It is similar in format and content to the Putnam competition, but the problems are somewhat easier. The Mock Putnam Exam serves as a practice test for the Putnam Exam, and a key tool in the selection of the U of I Putnam Team. Prizes of up to $300 are available to the top scorer(s).
The UI Freshman Math Contest. A recent addition to the local math contest offerings, the UI Freshman Math Contest is held in early fall in conjunction with the UI Mock Putnam Exam. Somewhat easier than the Mock Putnam Exam and restricted to Freshmen, the UI Freshman Contest provides incoming students an opportunity to show their problem solving skills in direct competition against their peers.
The UI Undergraduate Math Contest. Formerly known as the "Orange and Blue Contest", the UI Undergraduate Math Contest is a long-running, locally organized problems contest, held in the spring semester. Prizes of up to $300 await the top scorer(s).

The UI Putnam Newsletter

The UI Putnam Newsletter is an email newsletter containing announcements about the Putnam competition and other contest-related activities at the U of I. The mailing list for the newsletter is maintained by Professor Hildebrand; to be put on this mailing list, send an email to ajh@illinois.edu with your email address (i.e., NetID) at illinois.edu. Put "Putnam Mailing List" in the subject line.

Note: This is a local newsletter, with announcements of local events and activities that would be of little interest to those not at the U of I. To keep the mailing list manageable, it is restricted to U of I students and faculty, and an illinois.edu address is required.

Links and Resources

Of Related Interest

Undergraduate research opportunities. The recently created Illinois Geometry Lab (IGL) and the Illinois Risk Lab provide opportunities for undergraduates to get involved in research and outreach projects.
Math Honors program. The Math Honors Sequence is a sequence of challenging courses, taught in small sections by carefully selected research-active faculty.
Math Scholarships, Awards, and Prizes.
Math Clubs. PiMuEpsilon is a national math honors society that has a chapter at the University of Illinois. MATRIX is a local math club that started in 2004.

Last modified: Fri 05 May 2023 05:59:27 PM CDT A.J. Hildebrand