Dos Pueblos High School Elena Beckman (10) will participate in the Mathematics Olympiad Program (MOP) next month, after qualifying on April 24, becoming one of only 60 students across the country in to do so.
“I’m really happy,” Beckman said. “I was not expecting to make it.”
MOP is used to train and select the six members of the US International Mathematical Olympiad team, however Beckman said joining the team is not a current goal of hers.
To qualify for MOP, students need to score well on the American Mathematics Competition (AMC 10 or 12), which cuts the number of contestants down to around 300,000 people. Then contestants are invited to the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), which decreases the total to around 15,000 people. After that, contestants qualify for the United States of America Junior Mathematics Olympiad, which is only around 500 of the people who excelled at the AIME. Contestants who succeed in that become one of the 60 people to be invited to MOP. Notably, Beckman is among one of 15 girls selected for the program.
The Mathematics Olympiad Program is a three-week intensive camp – spanning June 5 through 27– in which math students in the United States develop their skills through lectures, tests and projects.
The average day at MOP consists of three hour-and-a-half long instructional sessions. Every few days, participants get four-hour-long, four-question tests to work through.
In addition to the many qualifying tests taken to qualify for MOP, Beckman regularly attends college-run math competitions. She has also received personal one-on-one Olympiad training and competes with DPHS’s math team, which she’s been part of for the past two years.
