Mathematics Olympiads and India
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International Math Olympiad
India's performance
See International Math Olympiad and India
European Girls Mathematics Olympiad
India's performance
See European Girls Mathematics Olympiad and India
2024
Shruti Sonal / Letʼs add up the medals: The ʻOlympicsʼ where India is shining/ TNN Aug 8, 2024
These come on the heels of a great haul by Indiaʼs four women team at the European Girls Mathematics Olympiad (EGMO) in April, with
all participants bagging individual medals.
Far from being a stroke of luck, the medals have been a couple of years in the making.
How India improved its tally
As of 2024
Shruti Sonal / Letʼs add up the medals: The ʻOlympicsʼ where India is shining/ TNN Aug 8, 2024
Mentorship by former medalists, offline camps run by premier institutes, and a growing online community of enthusiasts who share tips and resources, have all been crucial.
Rohan Goyal, the 21-year-old who is headed to the prestigious MIT for a PhD in mathematics, says that when he started preparing for Olympiads in class 9, the only resources he had were online forums like Quora.
To help other aspirants, he started giving online classes during the pandemic.
2021, things became more formalised, after two Olympiad-enthusiaststurned-entrepreneurs — Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder of InShorts, and Swarnima Bhattacharya, co-founder of Thea — came on-board to provide logistical and financial help.
Thatʼs how the Sophie Fellowship was born, which included a free mentoring program from medalists. “A number of Indians had been getting individual medals at IMO and EGMO since 2019, but as a team, we still had work to do and mental barriers to cross,” Goyal says.
Offline camps exclusively for female participants, as well as mentorship by former medalists, has pushed the number of participants recently
Changing the fortunes of the womenʼs team was a more uphill task.
Till 2020, India did not even have enough participants to send a team for the EGMO.
To create a pool of talent, national women-only training camps were introduced at the Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) in 2021. In the first camp, only five candidates turned up for selections, says former Math Olympian and mentor Rohinee Joshi, but the numbers have gone up each year since then. “Now we have a very competitive pool and getting into the team has become very difficult,” she adds.
Mentorship can make a whole world of a difference to an Olympianʼs journey. Gunjan Agarwal, who developed an interest in the world as a fourth-grader, was full of doubts when she was not able to solve any of the problems in her first EGMO in 2021 and scored a zero. “I really thought that itʼs not worth it anymore. But a lot of senior Olympians told me to keep trying,” says the 17-year old. What followed were a string of medals: a bronze in 2022, and silvers in 2023 and 2024.
Academies too have sprung up across the country, aiming to foster talent from a young age. Kolkata-based Cheenta Academy for Olympiad and Research, run by Ashani Dasgupta, a PhD holder in mathematics from University of WisconsinMilwaukee, is one of them.
Earlier, while a large number of class 11 students were told to stop appearing for Olympiads and focus on entrance exams, many colleges now offer direct admissions to medalists.
Joshi was offered a seat by IIT-Bombay without appearing for JEE, while Goyal made it to CMI. Agarwal has already secured a seat at Cambridge for higher studies, and says her Olympiad experience helped.
See also
Mathematics Olympiads and India
European Girls Mathematics Olympiad and India for detailed results
International Math Olympiad and India for detailed results
