The scratching sound of pencil on paper. The students are already halfway through the three-hour-long test. In a small room, the best mathematicians in the school are grinding away at the problems on the 2025 American Invitational Math Examination, one of the hardest math competitions in the entire nation.
Academic olympiads are competitions that test skills and knowledge in various disciplines, including mathematics, physics, biology and more. Many of these olympiads have increasingly difficult rounds that even go up to the international level. They provide a challenge that can be enticing to certain talented students.
“There’s so much stuff out there that you just never get a chance to see in school and it’s really just an interesting world to explore,” said Surya Dinesh, a senior who has participated in olympiads throughout high school.
Several students participate in these competitions, and the school administers three major national olympiads: the USA Math Olympiad (USAMO), USA Physics Olympiad (USAPhO) and USA Biolympiad (USABO).
The school offers a series of mathematics competitions that are a part of the national mathematics olympiad organized by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).
Every November, the Upper School math department offers the AMC 10 for freshmen and sophomores talented in mathematics. The AMC 12, for slightly older students, is also offered for juniors and seniors. Both competitions have two versions, the A and B versions. These competitions are effectively the first round in the mathematics olympiad cycle. Students who do well in the AMCs qualify for the American Invitational Math Examination (AIME). The school administers the AIME in early February.
This year, 20 students qualified for the AIME. Students who do exceptionally well in both the AMCs and AIME qualify for the USAMO or USAJMO national competitions.
In February, the school’s science department offered the F=ma competition, the open round of the physics olympiad taken by thousands of students across the country.
Students who did well will advance to the national round, or the USAPhO, made up of the 400 top scorers. Dinesh has earned recognition for reaching this national round several times.
The science department also offered the USABO open round for the national biology olympiad in February to any interested students.
Students who perform well in this preliminary round advance to the USABO semifinal round, an even harder competition.
There are other prominent academic olympiad competitions that are not administered by the school. The USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) is an online competition that students interested in coding and computer science can sign up for by themselves.
Multiple competitions are offered year-round, and strong performances allow students to advance to higher tiers of competition, the highest being the platinum division.
For many students, participation in challenging olympiads can also serve as a way to supplement their resume for college applications.
“It’s more than just sitting for the test,” Associate Director of College Counseling Josh Shandera said. “There’s more time and energy involved, and it becomes an activity in its own right to do those things competitively. It allows students to get more diversification that they’re able to do as well, and if a student places or earns some sort of award or recognition, they’re more universally (recognized).”
While these competitions are fairly popular at school, olympiads may be more obscure at other schools, where they are only taken by very interested students.
“In the wider community, olympiads are definitely a far more niche thing,” Dinesh said. “The percentage of people doing olympiads at St. Mark’s is a lot higher than almost anywhere else in the country.”
Preparing and studying for these olympiads is no easy task. In order to do exceptionally well in the multiple competition rounds, students study materials outside of their classes covering the subject, and this is an all year round process.
This competition cycle repeats every year.
“Preliminary rounds generally occur in the February timeframe, and the national olympiad rounds occur in March and April,” Dinesh said. “If you get past the national level to the international level, it goes into the summer.”
Academic olympiad competitions have been around for a while, and the school has offered the math, physics, and biology olympiads for decades.
With the high number of students participating and performing well in recent years, the presence of olympiads at St. Mark’s seems likely to continue.
