Several undergraduates place in Putnam competition

This was the fifth consecutive year that the Princeton team has won first or second place and the 27th year that it has been among the winning five teams. Princetonians also ranked in the top 25 in the individual competition.

Pardon, Adam Hesterberg ’10 and Anton Malyshev ’09, who received prizes of $1,000, and Zahariuc and Aaron Potechin ’09, who won $250 each, were among the 25 highest-ranking individuals.

“This was my fourth year doing the Putnam, and I just went in and took the test,” Potechin said. “This year, many of the problems seemed easy relative to previous years.” Potechin has also won a Churchill Scholarship to pursue a certificate of advanced study in pure mathematics at the University of Cambridge next year, the University announced Tuesday. The scholarship funds a year of postgraduate study at Cambridge for 14 winners nationwide.

Hesterberg said he was surprised to learn he’d won a monetary prize.

“I won a thousand dollars? Great!” Hesterberg said in an e-mail. “I’d thought only the top 5 got prizes. Mostly, though, it’ll be an honor to represent Princeton on the official team next year.”

He added that the University’s continued success in the competition was likely due to the math department’s encouraging many students to take the test. He noted that the department also offers introductory Putnam practice sessions for undergraduates.

Zahariuc said the University offers less rigorous training for the test than many other schools do. “There are places where you train intensively for the Putnam,” he explained. “Princeton always does very well in the Putnam and even without trying very hard.”

Malyshev said that he was somewhat surprised he won. “There tends to be a lot of chance to winning … Sometimes you happen upon the right solution,” he said in an e-mail.

Six more students earned honorable mention: George Boxer ’10, Simion Filip ’09, Xue Liu ’12, Kenneth Tay ’10, Andrei Ungureanu ’10 and Tengyao Wang ’12.

Tay has participated in the competition for the past three years and won an honorable mention his freshman year as well. Tay has been competing in math contests since high school.

The Putnam math competition is an annual North American math contest for college students, administered by the Mathematical Association of America. It is held on the first Saturday in December and has been offered annually since 1938. The examination is intended to test creativity as well as technical competence in undergraduate-level mathematics, according to the competition’s website.

The examination contains 12 problems, which test both technical ability and originality, and students are given six hours — split into two three-hour sessions in the morning and afternoon — to work on the problems, each graded on a basis of zero to 10 points.

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The average score each year for the overall exam is in the range of one or two points out of 120, and more than half of the competitors earn no points altogether. This year’s competition included more than 3,600 students.

For high school students, Tay explained, placing high in a math contest can be critical for college admissions. In college, though, most students participate for fun. “On an undergrad level, personally I just do it for fun,” Tay said. “I think it’s interesting to solve [the problems].”

Students who are honored in the Putnam competition get attention, though, Tay noted. “After the Putnam results come out, you do get letters from some schools and companies who are interested in talking to you … I guess it does open some doors,” he added.

Students from the math and physics departments are often among the highest-placing participants, Tay said.

There are certain schools that consistently place in the upper ranks of the contest, Malyshev said. “[It is] part of the culture of those competitions. They have these sort of schools that are good and then attract more people to their schools,” he explained.