The Bergen County Math League competition, otherwise referred to as the “BCML”, took place on March 1, 2023. All participating schools in Bergen County were divided into six groups, with the students being able to compete against one another for awards. Tenafly High School was put into Group 3, and the results of this competition ended with four students from THS having the following places: Alon Danai won first place in the County; Seihyun Lee won first place in Group 3; Thomas Yoon won first place in the school; Iris Sung won second place in the school.

Here’s what these four students had to say when asked about their thoughts from this experience.

What surprised you about this competition?

Alon Danai: “What surprised me was how many people did the competition. It was the first time everyone in the county did it in one building so I never saw how many people there were”. 

What did you learn from this experience?

Iris Sung: “Having participated in the competition for all four years in high school, rather than necessarily learning competition strategies, I learned the importance of checking back on my work. I found that over several years of experience, I learned to recognize patterns in the questions, which made me approach many problems mindlessly this year, occasionally leading to some inexplicable mistakes and preventable errors. I found going back over my work and tracing my own logic to be far more interesting and rewarding, and it made the competition experience a lot more fun”.

What did you find challenging from participating in this competition?

Thomas Yoon: “As one may expect, the most challenging experience was encountering a problem that I had no idea how to approach. In numerous math competitions throughout high school, I learned how to not panic when facing such a situation. It may sound generic but it sometimes helps to skip the question and come back later”.

Seihyun Lee: “I’m fluent in English but not in jargons, so that part was tricky, for example, in one of the questions, I didn’t know what ‘reciprocal’ meant”.

What would you like to say to any future students looking to join the Math Club?

Alon Danai: “To future students, I would just say to continue learning and practicing.”

Seihyun Lee: “To future students I recommend them to be patient and I wish them good luck.”

Thomas Yoon: “The Math Club is a very open club and helps you improve your math skills through discussion with other students and problem-solving. Harvesting resources offered by the club would be helpful in doing well in the competition. In our weekly meetings, we brought up problems that we were interested in and shared the solutions with one another. I believe in subjects like math that require complex thought processes and have countless ways to approach them, cooperating with others is crucial for success.”

Iris Sung: “I would strongly encourage everyone to participate, since math competitions are a fun and different way to exercise your math skills. I think that math competitions are very different from classroom math, and perhaps, more interesting.”