However, this very dominating winning team does not look like America -- all members are males, 5 Asians and one Caucasian, judging by appearances.
Photo credit: Carnegie-Mellon University
Pictured above: 2019 U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team members from left: Edward Wan, Daniel Zhu, Brandon Wang, Colin Shanmo Tang, Luke Robitaille, Vincent Huang
Race, gender, ethnicity, family income, sexual orientation or other identifiers do not factor in to qualifying for the team to attend the Olympiad. Instead, selection is based solely on scores in math competitions.
Students qualify for the U.S. IMO team by participating in a series of competitions provided by the Mathematical Association of America’s competitions program, called the MAA American Mathematics Competitions (AMC). Approximately 300,000 students worldwide participate in the MAA American Mathematics Competitions each year which leads the nation in strengthening the mathematical capabilities of the next generation of problem solvers. The six U.S. team members joined 65 of their peers from the United States and seven other countries at MAA AMC’s Mathematical Olympiad Program in June to immerse themselves in problem solving and train for the IMO and other international competitions including the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad where the U.S. team, also organized by MAA, won first place in April.
Similar objective standards apply for the international competition.
