Perfect marks in Olympiad for QE mathematician

A QE Sixth-Former is waiting to hear if he is to represent Britain at the International Mathematics Olympiad after achieving a perfect score in the prestigious domestic competition.

Bhavik Mehta’s 60 out of 60 in the first round of the British Mathematics Olympiad (BMO) gained him a place at an overseas training camp for the candidates for the British team, as well as a book prize – Introduction to Inequalities by Christopher Bradley – and a gold medal.

He had won his place in the BMO earlier in the year when he achieved QE’s highest score – 106 out of a possible 125 marks – in the UK Senior Mathematics Challenge.

Bhavik, of Year 13, has now also sat the BMO second round paper and will soon know whether he has achieved a high enough score to become part of the British team for the IMO, which will take place this July in Chiang-Mai in Thailand.

He was invited to the training camp in Hungary during the Christmas holidays. He stayed in Dombóvár Gunaras, a small town in the south west of the country, along with 21 UK school students. They took part in an intensive daily schedule which involved a two-and-a-half hour test every morning and a Mathematics lecture in the afternoon, followed by a group problem-solving session. In the evening they went through the test they had sat that morning.

“Bhavik has done exceptionally well, particularly in achieving a perfect score,” said Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung, who co-ordinates QE’s competition entries. “We wish him every success in the next round in his quest to join the élite group who go on to represent Britain at the IMO.”

He is one of only a handful of QE boys ever to have qualified for the second round of the BMO, the most recent being Old Elizabethan Gabriel Gendler who was placed equal 15th when he was still in Year 11. Gabriel is currently in his first year at Trinity College, Cambridge – where Bhavik himself has been offered a place to read Mathematics.

Round 1 of the BMO consisted of six long questions to be completed in three-and-a-half hours.  Round 2 involved four long questions, again to be completed in three-and-a-half hours.

In the Senior Kangaroo, a competition for those who do well in the UK Senior Mathematics Challenge but narrowly miss out on the points needed to qualify for the BMO, Tianlin Zhang, of Year 13, was awarded a Merit certificate for his score of 80 out of 100, while Ravin Parekh, also of Year 13, and Daniel Cheung, of Year 12, were both awarded Participation certificates.