Six Canadian high school students are celebrating their 12th place success upon their return from the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in Hong Kong. 

Each student earned an award for Canada after competing against over 600 students at the world’s most challenging high school mathematics competition. 

Students compete individually and country rankings are obtained by adding the team scores. The maximum score for each student is 42 and for a team of six students the maximum is 252. The Canadian team placed 12th out of 109 competing countries with a score of 148.

The 2016 contest was set by an international jury of mathematicians, one from each country, and was written on Monday, July 11th and Tuesday, July 12th. On each day of the contest, competitors had to solve three questions within a time limit of four and a half hours. 

Math Team Canada members received their medals at the IMO closing ceremony held on Friday, July 15th. Both Kevin Sun (Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH, USA) and William Zhao (Richmond Hill High School, Richmond Hill, Ont.) were awarded with gold medals, Kai Sun (A.B. Lucas Secondary School, London, Ont.) and Qi Qi (Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH, USA) were awarded with silver medals, Ruizhou Yang (University Hill Secondary School, Vancouver, B.C.) was awarded with a bronze medal, and Andrew Lin(University Hill Secondary School, Vancouver, B.C.) was awarded an honourable mention. 

Kevin Sun’s gold medal pushed him into the top echelon of high school mathematics with the IMO ranking him as the 17th best mathematics student in the world. Additionally, William Zhao, a grade 9 student, was the youngest participant to win a gold medal and Qi Qi was ranked as the highest scoring female participant in the competition.